


I Will Have You In My Hoard

by AquitaineQueen24



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: A certain someone finds another certain someone earlier than someone else might have planned, Alternate Universe, Can you tell this was inspired by my reading Catherynne M. Valente's Deathless?, Dark!Rey, F/M, I hesitate to call it, M/M, Multi, Pre-TFA AU, finn and poe do show up later on I swear, for her alone he will be weak, more references to Deathless as we go on I promise, one lonely soul finds another and it's all the way downhill from there, ooo ominous
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-11 14:18:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 51,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5629492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AquitaineQueen24/pseuds/AquitaineQueen24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What comes for Rey, after all her years of waiting, is not her family but a creature behind a mask who has found her at last, and who cannot keep her and cannot let her go.</p><p> </p><p>“Kylo Ren,” she says against his neck, where his hair curls and there’s salt and water. “Why do you care about Darth Vader?”  </p><p>She wonders if his saber broke when it hit the floor, just as he gets her by the shoulders and forces her back, away. She can feel where the bruises will appear as he digs in. Tomorrow she will show them off like trophies, like prized salvage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

For once Rey isn’t in the mood to watch a ship entering the atmosphere, what with getting the dirt off a particularly sharp piece of salvage without cutting her fingers. Then the murmur starts near the edge of the tent and Plutt is shouting for people to get back to work, only he stops all at once. That _does_ make her look up; in time to see Plutt actually squeezing himself out of his office so he can get a better look at-

she twists around to see

-the enormous, dark ship. Coming down towards the outpost. Flanked by several smaller crafts.

Rey can barely feel her hands all of a sudden. The heat no longer sits heavy in her limbs but is drawing into her centre, gathering around her beating heart, her wrenching stomach. She stays where she is and scrubs at the machine part because they’re not coming for her, no one comes for her.

Those around her who’ve been on Jakku for years and have no means of ever leaving are murmuring with curiosity and a little concern; it’s someone far away from the tent who’s screaming a high treble of _“First Order shit First Order!”_  

She’s standing. She’s knocked the table over and the woman who was sitting opposite her is spitting curses.  Rey apologises, watching how one of the smaller ships has sped ahead and is landing. Even before it’s touched the ground it opens up like a purse and there are pale things jumping out of it.

More people start shouting. Then, they start screaming.

They can’t be coming for _her._ No one ever comes for her. She’s nothing and no one.

Still.

Rey wedges her staff under one arm and sets off at a sprint into the sunlight, running blind for a few seconds as her numb hands fumble pulling on her head scarf and goggles, and her speeder is too far away, why does she _always_ park too far away from the depot, and then another ship is coming down between her and where she parked and the gust of the hovering craft knocks her clean into the sand.

When she manages to push herself up from the dirt this ship has opened up too. The beings that come out of it point weapons and shout commands and wear shining bright clean armour; even through the goggles she can tell how bare and stark they are. She has never seen anything so clean, so utterly wrong.

(The only things she can compare them to are streaks of clouds on the rare occasion this part of the world gets them, or the sun when it’s high in the sky, glimpsed out of the corner of her vision when the goggles are off. Then again, even if it can blind or kill you the sun is still a living colour, and the colour these beings wear is dead, if it was ever alive at all.)

One of these ghosts points its weapon at her. “On your feet.”

She scrambles away practically on her back, sand scratching her arms and sliding into her wrappings just so this being doesn’t get the chance to touch her, struggling to stand before anyone might paw at her in a well-meaning way. Not that anyone would. She pulls the staff close and, for now, it isn’t taken from her. Maybe they think she can’t do any real damage with it. She wonders briefly if she should try to show them otherwise, eyes the weapons still pointed at her, decides to stay as quiet and non-threatening as possible.

She and the others from the tent are told to keep quiet and obey. When one of the new, bolder scavengers protests at this a ghost shoots him in the leg and leaves him to scream on the ground. Everyone else is herded at gunpoint into one of several groups forming around where the massive ship has set down and is emptying out yet more ghosts, a taller ghost who fairly gleams in the sun like a highly polished speeder and.

And.

Rey ducks behind someone substantially large enough that the _thing_ coming out of the craft won’t spot her.

She thinks, bizarrely, of nothing so much as a huge black desert raptor plummeting to the sand, bouncing up, righting itself and straitening into a bipedal being, folding its wings into a cloak and shaping its cruel beak into that mask. It moves and looks around like a raptor as well, jerking motions of the arms and legs and head as it surveys the outpost, looking ready to pounce and tear the life out of anything near enough.  

And what sets her heart banging, makes her skin tight and starts the sweat flooding down the hollow of her back, is that this is a strange mask on a strange being that she can’t ever remember meeting before now, _ever_ \- but neither the mask nor the being is strange to her, even in the brief glimpse she got. Somehow and somewhere, she’s seen this creature before.

If she could forget meeting something like this, what else has she forgotten?

The creature – at least she thinks it’s the creature – is speaking.

It says in the buzz of an engine beneath metal, “I have come for the human girl that was left here, fourteen years ago.”

The feeling of _at last at last at last_ is like touching a live power current; she can literally feel her heart stutter, every muscle tightens, her throat closes up so she struggles to breathe. Fourteen years and _at last at last at **last**._ She wants to scream, to cry, to run away, to run forward, to pass out, to fall to the ground and shriek, to throw her arms around the one in black and ask what _took_ them so long and then

 ** _bang_.** Reality slams back in, because these beings are nothing to do with her family, they can’t be. Whoever, whatever they are, her family wouldn’t do this; they wouldn’t send an armed guard of sterile soldiers ready and willing to shoot people for no reason or a monster with a raptor’s face to collect her.

So.

So, so, so.

There are three ways this could go. She could still run for her speeder, get caught and dragged back - or just get shot _in_ the back. She could wait for someone to get scared enough to shove her before the creature. Or, she could walk forward on her own and see what these beings want with her. Not a lot of choice, but then she’s not going to have _any_ choice soon; the ghosts’ body language is getting more hostile by the moment and people standing nearby are already beginning to look in her direction.

Rey doesn’t, _can’t_ move.

“Where is the girl?” the engine’s roaring now. “Where _is_ she?”

The possibility of a fourth way flickers up for a second, she could fight – no, too many, and with too many weapons, she’d only get shot in the front instead of the back.

There are a number of whispers growing louder to her left. She barely turns her head to see that Plutt is staring at her, tilting his bulk, getting ready to make a move. Of _course_ he is. Maybe he was just taking time to calculate whether it would be safe to ask for a reward and, if it is, how much he should claim for selling her out.

Screw _that._ She was dropped onto this planet and into Plutt’s grasp like a bag of rations, but she’s _not_ going to be bartered off of Jakku the same way. However this ends, she’s going to have at least some say in what finally happens to her.

She braces herself, shifts her stance, calms her breathing. Plutt lunges towards her, much too slow. She does what she’s wanted to do for fourteen years and slams the staff down so hard what little there is of Plutt’s head seems to vanish into his neck.

It’d honestly be funny if it didn’t make her think for a second that _shit_ she’s killed him, but then he starts roaring in pain as he falls back on his arse. As she jumps over him and avoids the hand that tries to grasp her ankle she thinks that someone behind her might have muttered “That was _brilliant.”_

One ghost’s already noticed the scuffle and her break out from the crowd and instantly adjusts their aim; two more do as well. Within a heartbeat all of those masks are facing her, the weapons are trained on her and suddenly Rey really wishes she’d made some other choice. She stops, drops the staff and puts her hands up.

“I’m the girl,” she says, then reckons they might not be able to hear her. She pulls the scarf away from her mouth and shouts this time “I’m the one you’re looking for.”

Two of the ghosts march to either side of her. She’s already bracing herself for when they’ll grab her arms and force her to her knees, now or later, but then they stop just as they’re reaching out. They back away instead, looking over at the thing in black.

The creature is the last one of all to turn in her direction - which doesn’t mean that it was the last one to notice her presence. Perhaps it knew where she was before she ran out of the crowd, from the moment it set foot on Jakku’s sand. Maybe it knew from orbit. Maybe it’s always known.

Plutt shouts from behind her, gargling even more than usual, maybe she broke one of his teeth, “I took care of her! I looked after her as if she were my own!” She has to struggle not to turn around, find the staff and hit him again for such a huge lie. She clenches her jaw and just thinks about doing it instead.

“Did you, now.”  The creature starts pacing towards them, almost mechanical strides, and Rey really _doesn’t_ want to be here, she wants to be back in the home she’s made for herself in the desert with the door bolted tight against the night and the storm. Bringing this monster’s attention to herself is the stupidest thing she’s ever done, and possibly the last, but all the same she’s glad she isn’t Plutt right now as the black thing says “I think you’re lying.”

Plutt – she _thinks_ it’s Plutt, anyway someone makes a choking noise that is suddenly cut off. That’s all.

The sickness in her stomach nearly makes her keel over and her mouth is as dry as the Starship Graveyard, but she works some spit up and manages “What are you?”

The creature stops a few paces away from her. If it reached out – it _is_ reaching out to her, fingers curled, and she thinks again of the raptor, securing a hold to rip flesh off bones, the talons, the talons. The polished metal around the eyes looks like a raptor’s scales and she was right, the curve of the mask is so much like a ripping tearing beak.

The creature doesn’t touch her in the end, but the hand twists and _something_ that is not there somehow still grabs her goggles and yanks them up, hard, taking her head scarf with them. The sunlight burns and blinds as she fights her way through, but there is another sunburst inside her head, of agony this time

and a low quiet voice saying _invite me in Rey_

and she screams _no, not when I can’t see what you are behind that mask, not when I know nothing, not when you’re something that walked out of my nightmares_

_until later then_

and she’s left blinking in blindness and pain as the creature says  “Collect whatever you feel the need to bring,” and the ghosts are grabbing her arms at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've found that Kylo Ren and Rey fit the roles of Koschei and Marya Morevna from Deathless so very perfectly that I shall have to write something with them set more in that world too.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to get this up before mum and I went off to the cinema to see Episode VII again (wheeeeeeeeee) so this is still a bit rough. I beg your indulgence until I can fix it up this evening.

It’s only her speeder that really breaks through the shock, left behind by the sunburst and that voice. She has to tell the ghosts (who are not really ghosts) the location of the AT-AT. She has to do this knowing they’ll force their way into her home and trash all of her things as they look for anything they deem relevant. Hopefully they’ll at least leave the plant alone. Maybe they’ll even let her keep it, but her helmet and her doll are going to end up as ashes. Funny, she hasn’t looked at or held the doll in _ages,_ but knowing it’s going to be destroyed hurts.

But then, trying to build some sense out of _any_ of this, she asks about her speeder, still (she hopes) sitting over by the depot. The tall one doesn’t even look around from giving orders, let alone say anything. ‘What _about_ your speeder?’ looms unspoken.

She should be clever and say something like ‘I need it to show you where my home is’ or ‘I should to power it down so that someone else can use it’ or even ‘If you take me, the speeder goes too’. _Anything_ to get her close enough to her vehicle so she can jump on board, send an electric shock through those around her, start the emergency engine and get _away_ from the soldiers and ships and creature. She’ll think about what to do next when she gets that far.

All she can manage is “But it’s mine.”

Then, as they keep pulling her forwards anyway, towards the black ship, “No, please, it’s _mine,_ I built it, I can’t leave it, it’s mine, please, just wait, wait _please_.”

She tries to get a blow in at their knees but her legs just slip right out from under her as the soldiers start dragging. “It’s mine it’s mine let go _let go of me. **”** _ Her boots catch on the lip of the ship’s walkway and she’d be flat on her smashed-in nose if they hadn’t caught her under the arms, _still_ pulling. The metal’s sharp, cold against her legs as she kicks the knee on her left _hard_ and tries to pull out of the grip on her right arm, _“Get_ off _me!”_

“Sir,” the metal one is saying as the soldier on the left goes down with another kick and her next one catches them right in the helmet; her left side’s free, all she needs is to get her arm out of the other one’s grip and then she can run for her speeder, get to the Graveyard where she’ll lose them amid the ships or get shot down in the attempt.

The fingers dig in, so hard she snaps and cries out, so hard they must be meeting together around the bone of her arm. She grabs for the wrist behind the fingers, tries to break the grip, when

pain

worse

tight

up above half sky and half ship

**_tight_ **

breathe

can’t

raptor above

make it stop do anything just make it stop

_I would have preferred not to do this_

_Sleep_

* * *

 

She wakes up-

She was asleep?

She wakes up as someone moves her about in their arms, and then she’s put down gently on her feet and her wrists are restrained with cold metal before she can even open her eyes. There’s the awful taste in her mouth which means she was out for a while, and her eyelids are so heavy and every bit of her aches. She just wants to fall back into that sleep (how could she just fall asleep?) but she forces her eyes open to see

to see

a living breathing battleship. A ship as it was _meant_ to be, smaller ships on the floor and tiered up above, taking off into space and coming back. A docking bay like the ones she’s climbed through in the Graveyard but alive, filled with people and vehicles and more noise than a thousand scavenger teams searching and squabbling could ever make, enough people to fill a hundred Niima outposts just in _this_ docking bay, coming in and leaving by dozens of doors or walkways.

She turns in the soldiers’ grip enough to see Jakku, her Jakku, staring back at her, huge, beautiful, the colour of a beginning sunset. Somewhere down there Plutt is getting up (or not, ever again) and her speeder will sit forever until it rusts and all her hard work falls apart - or until the charge runs down and someone can steal it at last.

She hates this and she’s dreamed of this. She tries to look in every direction as they pull her along again. How can there be so many people in the universe? How can there be so many ships, so many droids ?How can the ones with uncovered faces look so unhappy?

How can there be so few non-humans?

Then she remembers the creature again as it stops and a human male with his own followers comes to stare at her, like she’s a rancid portion he’s just taken a bite from. He has hair that reminds her of the doll back down on the surface - that’s probably been burned by now, so really it reminds her of flames.

“ _This_ is the reason for my ship’s diversion?” he says.

The creature’s turned towards him, but she fancies whatever’s behind that mask is looking elsewhere as it replies “You were aware of the Supreme Leader’s orders. The objective has been completed. I trust discretion will be maintained?”

 At least two of the soldiers around them stiffen, especially the one still holding her by the arm, _ow,_ right in the place the last one left a bruise, and oh she does not like the sound of this. ‘Discretion’ is a very final sounding word, for everyone concerned.

If the flame haired human dislikes the taste of _her_ then the creature’s words seem to make him physically sick - but he nods, saying “It shall be done as the Supreme Leader wishes,” and then says to the tall metal soldier “Process her.” And _then,_ when the creature steps forward growling something that sounds like _hux,_ he says “If she is to remain on this ship, certain regulations must be carried out, whatever the measures that must also be taken. Would you not agree, _Lord_ Ren?”

So Rey is pulled away from the creature and ‘Hux’. They march her along various corridors she’s barely able to keep straight in her mind, and then the manacles come off and she’s pushed into a room where there are two more bare-faced humans. Female. This pair tell her to remove her clothes.

Two ways things can go this time: she can strip or be stripped. Again, not much choice, but again she chooses while there still is some and begins to unfasten her wrappings, tensing her shoulders as one of the females starts to undo her hair bindings. The other one takes her clothes as soon as they’re off and throws them through a small chute in the wall.

She’s down to her breast and hip wrappings when the female behind her pulls her hair tight round about her shoulders, then there’s a sharp sound and what hair she has left falls loose again. Her head feels much lighter.

She doesn’t watch to see if her hair goes the same way as her clothes.

Then she’s ordered into the next room to wash herself. The stink here is so bad – not cloying and heavy like a bad wound or luggabeast dung but sharp, like the purest of alcohol, stealing her breath; even the fortune’s worth of water they pour down on her, telling her to scrub her head arms breasts belly between and down her legs, isn’t enough to wash the smell away.

When the water finally shuts off and she’s left bloated, liquid heavy, moisture drunk and reeling, her own scent has been washed off instead, and she can feel how every little nick and cut from the last day or three is _stinging._ Her hands are on fire. She's glad she didn’t lose her head and actually swallow any of it, once she got over thinking she was going to die naked and terrified surrounded by enough water for several lifetimes.

She gets a large cloth to wrap around herself and a table to sit and drip on in the next room, as another female with a face, a doctor, checks various portions of her body and enters information on various screens. She answers as little as she can, yes's and nos. Sometimes the doctor persists and she has to give very basic stories as to why this arm got broken or that rib got cracked. The doctor marvels that, while Rey’s rather malnourished, she’s made it through puberty and into early adulthood in very good health. She asks about any medical aid available on Jakku.

“There was a doctor in Niima outpost. Roa. He patched people up if they got wounded, and gave first aid courses.”

“Imperial trained or Rebel?” The doctor asks this with a little more interest.

She stares at the wall. “It really never came up.” Actually Roa _had_ sometimes talked about having worked for the Empire and then the Rebellion, but she sees no need to discuss that.

“I don’t suppose he inoculated you against many strains?”

“No.”

The woman fills in some items on a smaller screen as she picks up a nasty looking tool and begins to load it with small vials. “Then I’m afraid you’re in for a rough few days.”

Four injections in the end, two in each arm, and it’s so hard for Rey not to whimper by the time the last one is finished. “You will be somewhat feverish for the next few days,” the doctor tells her, moving all the data she’s collecting from several screens to one small padd. “But that will be easily remedied.”

Rey thinks about the way the creature said ‘discretion’ earlier. What it means for anyone involved in her 'processing'. She wonders if she should say anything to this doctor. Or anything to the two women from the first room, who are holding out new clothes for her to take.

She _really_ doesn’t like the feel of these clothes, too soft and fake and the shoes are much too fragile, useless - but she pulls them on and sets her mind to ignore the panic in her skin, the pain every time a sleeve brushes her upper arms. She ties her hair back as best she can, missing the weight of it, and then sits and tries to focus on something other than the throbbing.

Still, it’s better than whatever happened before she blacked out. Oh, _yes._ Better than what seemed like every muscle she has seizing up with cramp all _at once._

And then in comes the creature.

The cloak’s gone now, so she can see it has a standard humanoid form - taller than average for some species but small for others - and that the raptor mask is not a mask so much as a helmet. Now it looks like a whole raptor at rest with wings held slightly out, ready to fly again, perched atop a walking biped form. The scales and the beak and the eyes turn to Rey from the moment it walks in.

“Come with me,” the creature says. The doctor offers the data chip she’s taken from the last padd to the creature, which takes it without even looking at her. Rey watches the woman’s face and knows there would have been no point in voicing her fears. The doctor already knows. She knows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dr Roa did indeed work for the Republic, Empire and Rebellion; he shows up in Deathstar by Michael Reeves and Steve Perry. I was rather disappointed that he's never featured in any of the other Legends materials.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I just wanted to get this out to you all finally, so this will be cleaned up tomorrow.

The creature clearly expects Rey to walk at its side. When she falls behind because her feet slip around on the far too polished metal floor (the _stupid_ shoes don’t have a proper grip) or when she’s pauses trying to rub some warmth into her arms and get some heat back into her hands, the creature will slow its pace and one of those white faceless soldiers (Stormtroopers) will push her into walking again. The third time she stops the creature actually stops as well, turning to look back at her.

It says nothing.

She hurries to catch up, nearly slipping again in the _bloody_ shoes, and doesn’t dare stop to look around and get her bearings again. For any reason. She’ll have to rely on what she can remember of the old star-destroyers she picked over with others and by herself –

-but those were old, _decades_ old now, only scrap metal. This is a brand new ship and things are too different, too many people getting in the way, she’s getting to _hate_ how many people there are just on this one ship, too many people between her and the docking bay.

And she can’t _think_ properly because she’s too _cold,_ she can barely feel her feet and hands now. How can it be so _cold_ when everywhere is so bright and shining?  She tucks her hands into her sides to store her warmth. At one point when the creature turns sharply to the right at a junction she doesn’t get out of the way fast enough, so her right arm hits the wall and her left presses for an instant against the creature’s body. Only for a single moment but her arms still burn, which helps to distract from the cold in the rest of her but krithing hells it hurts.

She tries to fight her way through, work it out, how to get out of this mess, but she can’t think while the creature is looking at her. She knows it’s watching her. It might not have stopped watching her, somehow, since it collected her from the doctor.

It let her be cleaned up and trimmed and dressed and treated for any possible health problems that could turn up in a few days or in the future, so it’s not going to kill her. That’s not going to happen.

What’s _going_ to happen, Rey knows, is what happens to _anything_ after it’s been discovered, ripped out of its rightful place and ‘salvaged’. Now she’s scrubbed clean of dirt, polished, trimmed, she’s going to either be used, displayed, stored or traded. Hard to tell which option is the worst when she’s working with so little information.

The nausea fills her head and throat, too fast. She needs to stop. She can’t stop. She has to work for spit to swallow and swallow again, an old trick to stop sickness, but for a moment she thinks she might just have to bend over and vomit anything left in her onto the floor. She digs her nails into her sides and stays upright through the sickness and cold and burning.  

The creature stops by a doorway, keys in the code and turns to face Rey as the door opens. It reaches out to take her arm. She stays quite still until it’s only a hand, a finger space away. She has to _try._ She darts for the gap between creature and wall and the long empty corridor beyond. Here she goes - _no._

Something’s got hold of one wrist and then both but isn’t _there_ , just like the something that pulled her headscarf off, and she can’t get a grip on the floor to stop sliding forward into the room, wrists first, she’s going to be dragged off her feet. “I can _walk,”_ she’s saying even as she’s pulled over the threshold.

The room’s bigger that the whole of her AT-AT, dark despite the lights on the walls. It makes her think of the cool, shadowed insides of star-destroyers, which is stupid because this is a star-destroyer as well, but it’s not like the bustling sterile organization of the living crafts. It’s more like the deep rooms hidden from the sun, the ones only the most dedicated scavengers reach. The smell doesn’t fit the look of the room, though. There’s a table in the middle of the chamber covered in plates and bowls.

They’re steaming and the ones that are uncovered are filled with bright colours, liquids and more solid things.

She steps back and smacks into what can’t be the door, must be the creature’s chest. She hears the door shut, and lock. She has to work up some more spit to say, not ask, “What _is_ this.”

“Food. Although I realise you might not be familiar with it in such forms.” It moves past her and over to the table. “Or if you mean what I intend by presenting you with this, I should think it obvious.”

Her head pounds, her arms throb, her throat’s so dry the sides of it are sticking together. This is too much. “If you think I’m going to touch _any_ of that-”

“You’re hungry,” it says, the machine purring. “You haven’t eaten today. You are pained from your medical inspection. And you’re cold.”

“Which I wouldn’t _be,_ if you hadn’t dragged me from my home.”

“Jakku? That grave-pit?” It tilts its head, again like a raptor sizing up a meal. “Eking out a living on a dead world, scavenging faded relics, selling your days of effort for scraps? That place was never your home. There are far worthier places waiting. Your destiny lies elsewhere.”

There are tears to fight now, too. She will not think of her doll her helmet her plant her marks on the wall her sunsets her meals her _home._ “Nice speech. I’d still rather not eat something offered to me by a creature in a mask. Especially one who dragged me off my world.”

She waits for it to say something else, seize her with that force she can’t see and _drag_ her to the table, clench its fingers and hurt her again in every muscle of her body. Instead, so quick and simple, it reaches up and unlatches something. There’s time for her to think _there should be more to it than this,_ then the helmet comes off.

It’s.

 _He’s_ the whitest human she’s ever seen, with the darkest hair. She hadn’t thought humans could be that white. That flame-haired man, Hux, she thought he was pale, but this man is like the Stormtroopers’ armour, a dead colour.

He goes down on one knee to put the helmet on the floor, and stays there. “You cannot leave this room until I allow it. And it would be a shame to let all this go to waste.” He reaches for one of the nearest bottles, and two glasses.  

She watches him pour the water, at least she _thinks_ it’s water although it might be spirits, into the glasses. Perhaps the ‘vaccinations’ are giving her heat-dreams along with painful arms and a wrenching stomach. Nothing about this dead-faced man on his knees before her, wanting to serve her this fortune in food, cutting a slice out of a dark lump now, makes the least bit of sense. “I thought the First Order don’t concern themselves with things like luxury.”

He spreads some smooth paste over bread, oh stars is that _real_ bread, not just synth-loaf? “So they claim. I am not _of_ the First Order, but I know of their aim to eradicate such decadence.” He finishes with the knife and starts to spoon something black and glistening on top of the spread. “Still, you can gain your first lesson from this, Rey”

_He knows her name of course he already knew her name he whispered it in her head during the sunburst down below_

“the common Stormtrooper eats basic rations, but the strong still sit in their chambers, and drink Mandalorian wine, and gorge themselves. The Stormtroopers might own nothing, not even their armour, and eat as miserably as you ever did on Jakku, but Hux never misses his wine with supper.”

He holds the bread, with all its toppings, out to her. “Will you try it?”

“What _is_ it?” Now she’s thought about synth-loaf her stomach is no longer churning but howling for something to eat.

“Scalefish roe, from Naboo.” He pulls it back towards him again, near his mouth. “Would you prefer that I taste it first, to put any fears to rest?”

“So what? You could have immunized yourself to anything you put in it.” She still moves closer. Fish. She never thought she’d ever taste fish. The ‘roe’ are wet and dark, they glisten like droid eyes, like oil.

She should refuse. She should let him eat it, eat all of the things he’s spread out for her. She shouldn’t even look as they all disappear with their poisons and their power over her. She wants to face whatever comes next on her own terms, not trading a bit of herself, _all_ of herself, away for fancy food.

The man holds the bread, the spread, the roe, very near his mouth. He’s going to eat it. He’s going to sodding eat it right in front of her, and while he’s probably above making obvious noises of enjoyment like Plutt _(don’t think about Plutt)_ he’ll probably keep eye contact with her all the while. Bastard. Blood-drinking bastard.

She can do this. She’s been trading herself for food for nineteen years. Why turn her back on it now? And a trade for something she wants even more than the bread, whatever’s bubbling in that pot near the end, the fruits like engine lights.

She walks to the other side of the table to have some kind of barrier between them, and plunks herself down just opposite him. “Give it to me.” _Don’t make me ask. **Please** don’t make me beg._

If he’d said anything, smiled, even twitched an eyebrow she might have thrown the bread and spread and roe back in his face. He hands it over without so much as a twitch, not even needing to celebrate. Which is unnerving.

She brings the slice of bread close to her own lips, and watch as his lips part, just a little. She lowers it and says, “Swear by that Supreme Leader you mentioned. Swear that nothing on this table will harm me.”

His eyebrows come down. The ship must put on a burst of speed because everything on the table rattles for a second. But he says, after a few hurried heart beats, “I swear, by Supreme Leader Snoke, nothing on this table will harm you.”

She bites down and nearly spits as it _bursts_ in her mouth, an explosion of water and salt, salt, salt, so much salt, the thickness of the bread filling her mouth. She has to drink from the glass he pushed over, and it’s _not_ water, but she only coughs a little as it all goes down together to her famished body. She needs to breathe deep from the taste and texture of it.

She finishes off the rest of it and licks her mouth and teeth for the remnants of the burst roe, bread stuck in her teeth. “Who are you?”

He lifts a bowl containing round shapes, nearly the colour of human blood, her blood. “Kylo Ren.”

“Why did you come for me?”

“For that, Rey, you’ll need to go on as you began.”

She eats the nearly bloody things – some sort of thing like Veg-Meat, only much more solid and crunching wetly, tasting of sharpness and sourness and earth – and then says again through what she imagines must be dripping red teeth, “Why did you come for me?”

“Because I was ordered to do so,” as he passes her something that looks like grains of sand a thousand times bigger, swimming in water. Smooth and erasing the taste of the blood, and they stick in her teeth too.

“What are you going to do with me?”

A bowl of something so hot she has to put it down. She thinks there’s actual meat in there, meat that’s never been synthesised and processed and mulched. “I am going to keep you quite safe. And I am going to take you to my master.”

The bowl’s contents are hot enough that she has to concentrate on finishing it for ages. It burns her tongue so many times, the meat comes apart and dances in flakes and wisps around her mouth. So many tastes and textures! When she finally puts the bowl down for the last time, she can hardly think of what to ask. “And then what will happen?”

“That is up to you.” Ren tops up her glass yet again, liquid that tastes of the nothingness of pure water but is bubbling in her stomach along with all her other treats.

She eats some sort of meat which, Ren tells her, is the tongue of some rare beast. She thinks apologies to the creature, bad enough to be killed without someone eating your voice as well as everything else, and asks with her own voice “Why me?”

“You are of great importance.” He looks up from considering what to pass her next. “I now understand just how great that importance is.”

There are other things and dishes, but what she likes most is what comes right at the end, the spoonful of something called ‘jam’ that she puts on her tongue, sour and sweet tingling through her mouth, and then sipping hot tea to melt it and swill it about her mouth. She as warm as soup, as stew, as tea. She can’t remember what happens between putting down the cup and Ren’s arms lifting her up.

She can’t move again, not trapped with pain and tightness this time but with utter limpness, like exhaustion after one of her hard days of work. Ren carries her to a bunk set in the side of the room she hadn’t spotted before. He lays her down and pulls the coverlet up, she watches from her free eye, the other sunk into the mattress, as he backs away and considers her.

* * *

 

She wakes up in total darkness with a clearer head, arms that still hurt and a stomach on fire. She can’t even get up before she’s found the edge of the bunk and retches all that lovely dinner onto the floor. Wasted the food after all. Was it poisoned? Did Ren lie? It would give her a weapon against him. But Rey knows, depressingly, that nineteen years of Veg-Meat and synth loaves have warped her stomach into something that can't bear richness.

She spits to gets the sickness out of her mouth (the floor’s already a mess so what does it matter) and settles back down, hugging the blanket around her so she doesn’t lose heat from the sweat soaking her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was anyone expecting that little charming interlude? 
> 
> Well, the people who've read Deathless might have. Of course, in Deathless Koschei was chattering away ad nauseam (very beautiful ad nauseam it is too) and Marya says nothing at all, so I had to adjust a bit.
> 
> I worry that Kylo Ren might seem a bit OOC, but I maintain that when he's not obsessively hunting down droids and freaking out about threatening (intriguing) new force users and worrying about disappointing Daddy Snoke, he CAN maintain a mostly genuine air of competence and authority. What's going on inside his head is, of course, a completely different story.
> 
> And yes, all that was taken from Hux's menu. I think he was going to eat some of it that 'dinner time' before Ren requisitioned it for Rey. Hux is not best pleased.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, this needs a good going over tomorrow with a beta fine tooth comb, but I wanted to get this out to you all after failing to update at the weekend, and so that this will not hang about my neck like an albatross.

The mess beside the bed grows larger through what passes for the night. After the second time there’s nothing left to bring up but saliva and acid, but her body doesn’t realise that. She’d always thought her body and brain worked so well together before now.

Whenever she tries to sit up it feels like someone inside her skull pounding and hammering, trapped in a sealed compartment and trying to get out. Her arms still burn like metal left out too long in the sun, her stomach lurches like speeder sickness, a feeling she hasn’t had since she was _twelve_ for shit’s sake, and she has to fall back down quick and retch again.

The pillow she’s found has run out of cool places to rest her head. She presses her skin to where the bed ends and the wall begins but she’s burning the chill out of it. She pulls the blanket up to warm her and pushes it away because she’s so _hot._

She lies on her side, ready for the next contraction. She sweats and shivers and spasms.

She tries to sleep to get away from it all, but her body thinks it’s time she should be getting to work, climbing dunes or wrecks, managing the speeder, carrying on with a standard Jakku routine. She begs her flesh to let her rest; it only hums like the bed around her and room and ship around her. It wants to be back on Jakku.

She thinks of when she’s prepared her body for major jobs and climbs, negotiating with it to put in bursts of speed and strength, of times when she’s had trouble sleeping before and had to trick her flesh into powering down. She tries to talk to her weary muscles that don’t understand what’s going on, wanting to get back to Jakku and do what she’s programmed them to for food and water and life.

 _Please, let me **sleep** , let me escape for a little while_, the part of her that’s not her body or the meat of her brain is begging. She cries, on and off, from pain sickness _tiredness._

The doctor lied, the injections aren’t keeping her from getting sick. Or she still lied and the injections were never meant to keep her safe at all.

Or Ren lied and the food _was_ poisoned.

Or Ren still lied without knowing and the food wasn’t poisoned but still not safe for a human to eat; not for a human raised on processed portions that had been grown and made in vats.

Now her bladder’s getting full, to the point of pain, even though she’s surely thrown up half the spirits that she drank and sweated the rest away. If she doesn’t get up soon she’ll be lying in her own piss along with her sweat.   

She counts to five and manages to push herself up, and stay upright. Five more counts and she pulls her feet over the edge of the bunk. Five more and she sets them down, managing to avoid the vomit. She nearly falls back down when the lights appear all at once and blind her.

Somehow she finds her way to a wall. She does what Plutt’s always mocked her with and crawls, sneaks, creeps, makes her way along in a crouch, keeping one arm to the metal, cool and soothing. She feels for a door. The lines of a hatch. Something.

The lights become even brighter, if that’s possible. There’s a hissing sound of what must be the door opening and then a high voice, buzzing behind a Stormtrooper’s helmet, “Come with us.”  

She tries to push herself up and manages to whisper “I’m coming I’m coming please just don’t.” Then she screams “Oh you **_fucking”_** when a hand grabs her free upper arm and she’s sure she just felt something inside her burst with agony. She nearly loses control of her bladder. The hand digging into her flesh shakes it like the Stormtrooper wants to rip her arm off and the pain impossibly grows, maybe it’ll knock her out so she can finally rest.

But she doesn’t black out, so she has to try and deal with them pulling her out of the room and along another corridor, her feet dragging because they won’t let her _walk_ and one shoe comes off. She knows in her brain she should try to fight, run, escape, but her body suddenly doesn’t want to do anything, oh, _now_ it wants to rest.

This time there’s no choice about stripping or being stripped, as they hold her still to peel the sodden clothes off her. She wonders if they’ll take off the rest of her hair as well, peel her skin off too, she can’t possibly feel any more wretched and exposed than this, but they just shove her into a room with water again. She crawls - hands and knees - to a corner, wedges herself there, wraps her arms around her legs and presses her forehead into her knees to stop the pounding.

“I want to go _home,”_ she says to her knees and the stinging water. Then she howls it to the room. She is sick and naked and cold and all she ever wanted was for someone to come back for her, and she wants to go home to Jakku.

A voice chimes from the ceiling, “Wash yourself or I’ll come in there and do it for you.”

Between breath and breath Rey wants to find whoever that voice belongs to and kill them.

“I’m doing it, I’m _doing_ it,” she says instead, pressing her elbows into the walls and pushing herself up.

Her stomach has decided to cooperate now, the water does actually help her sore eyes and her head, her arms no longer hurt as much, and her bladder feels empty so at some point she must have let go. Probably why they’re so disgusted with her, the filthy savage scavenger with no personal hygiene.

She rubs suds through her hair and tries to plan _something,_ the water filling her skin and waking her body up, letting it listen to her properly again. Make a plan. She breathes in, out, in again and tries to decide a route, like working out how to climb a wreck, or where to scale a ruined wall find the right capacitor. If she acts like she’s given in, even more than she already has, maybe the guards will grow complacent. She’ll be able to break away from however many there are (like that’s worked before) and get to a hangar. Get a ship and

then what?

She digs her fingernails into her scalp and longs to draw blood. Even if she gets away from the guards, to a hangar, into a ship _and_ far away enough from the star destroyer to jump to light-speed, without getting shot down or captured again. When, _if_ all that’s done, where does she do then? If she hadn’t been so sick she might have been able to get out before now, before they got too far away from the planet, but where have they taken her while she was out of her mind? How to get back to Jakku without proper coordinates, or a guidance system?

And if she _did_ get back, is there anything left for her to go back _to?_ They might have killed Plutt (don’t think of Plutt). What have they done to everyone else at Niima Outpost?

How can she know they won’t follow her?

Ren would follow her. She’s as certain of that as knowing she’s seen him _somewhere_ before now, before Jakku. If she somehow manages to run and speed and fly, he’ll hunt her down.

So.

So, so, so.

The water shuts off and there’s no more time for plans. She has to scurry back out, to where a Stormtrooper thrusts a towel and more clothes at her, black this time instead of grey. She pulls the underwear on quickly so that she doesn’t have to be quite so exposed, and starts getting the knots out of her hair with her fingers while it’s still wet and easy. One good thing about having short hair.

“The knits, too,” one of the Stormtroopers says, she thinks it’s one who hasn’t spoken before, hard to keep them all accounted for when they move around so much. She doesn’t understand until it points at the clothes, still on the floor.

“Give me a moment.”

 _“Now.”_ The Stormtrooper moves closer. That tone of voice changes her mind; it has spoken to her before. It’s the one who shouted at her in the shower, the one she thought of killing.

Rey never breaks off looking at where she presumes the thing’s eyes must be behind that visor, as she bends down to pick up the ‘knits’, straightens up and tucks them under one arm, then goes back to running her fingers through her hair. She’s pretty sure that the Stormtroopers aren’t allowed to actually, obviously harm her. Hurt her by dragging her around while being efficient, yes, but they don’t seem to be allowed to hit her.

The Stormtrooper’s hands ball into fists.

She’s so cold she has to press her teeth together to stop them clacking like a rusty motor and the underclothes are hard and rasping against her skin and her breasts, but she takes her time hitching up the trousers, tightening them around her waist, pulling on the tunic, sorting out the ties, and finally doing it up from her belly to her neck.

Then, before any of them can order her around again, she crosses her arms and says “So, where to now.”

* * *

 

She thinks they take her back to the same room she was in before - they take the same route, anyway, in reverse – but the floor by the bunk is clean and the bunk newly made up with fresh sheets, and there’s food on the table again. This time it’s just steaming liquid in a bowl, some more real bread to the side, and a glass of some white substance.

Rey walks past the table to curl up on the bunk again, hoping that this time her body will let her sleep. She’s just settled down on the really too comfortable mattress (that can’t have helped her sleep either) when there’s the hiss of the door. Not the door Ren pulled her in and the Stormtroopers pulled her out through; another door.

She opens her eyes a crack. Ren is standing on the other side of the table, helmet on once more.

“What do _you_ want?”

He tilts his head again. “Surprising, that in fourteen years on that planet you haven’t learned by now to watch your mouth.”

“I’ll save being polite for when I’m not sick from being drugged.” She closes her eyes and slips and hand beneath her head. The cloth smells so sterile; another thing to keep her from drifting. She wants her bunk back in her home, that smells of _her._

The table rattles again, and now she’s not so sure it’s because of the ship. “I gave you my word. There was nothing in what you ate that should have harmed you. As long as your body could process it,” he adds.

Fourteen years of nothing but portion packs and vat-meat. Not really surprising her body started panicking and purging itself, if Ren’s telling the truth; she wonders if he thought of it even as he watched her eat, but didn’t stop her. Or perhaps it’s only just now occurred to him.

She can’t _help_ but think of Plutt now, how _he’d_ watch her take her portions, knowing she relied on him for food, grinning, enjoying his power over her.

This whole thing has been a lesson, probably not even the first.

“Rey. You _will_ eat. I can make you do it.”

She burrows deeper, begging sleep to hurry up, _I don’t care that I’m starving and cold just let me rest._ Then something within her, something that’s nothing to do with her, grips from inside her chest and _jerks._

“Don’t,” she says as _something_ sits her up, “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

 _Something_ pauses, and then leaves. Ren sits down on his side.

Perhaps, she thinks as she forces herself up and off the bunk, wobbling over to the table, she’ll be able to lean forward enough to vomit right into Ren’s lap.

She grabs the spoon and starts to shovel up the liquid. Soup. Hopefully her stomach won’t have too much to complain about there. It’s strange to eat such a hot thing, and she has to stop a few times to drink from the glass, a thick liquid that clings and cools inside her mouth.

She looks up, spoon in her mouth, to see that Ren’s taken off his mask again and watches her with slightly narrowed eyes. She makes a show of loudly swallowing, picks up the bread and tears a chunk off with her teeth, washes it down with more white liquid.

“You think I’m cruel, like Plutt.”  She stops mid-chew and looks over his shoulder, not in his face.

“I think you’re a lot worse than Plutt,” she says once she’s swallowed. “He never forced me into doing things I didn’t want to.”

“Don’t pretend. He forced you to work for your food, more than any reasonable employer should. He enjoyed having power over you.”

And you don’t. “He didn’t _torture_ me, at least.” She meets Ren’s eyes as she pops the last shred of bread between her lips.

And Ren’s lips curl at one edge before he speaks again. “You think you’ve known cruelty. Jakku’s in your bones and blood, it will never leave you, and that planet _eats_ those who end up there. But I can be cruel to you, Rey. It’d stop your breath, how cruel I can be. You understand that, don’t you? You’re a clever little scavenger.”

Rey says nothing to that, chewing to stop what she wants to say: that his words are the oddest thing, that he means them, totally, and yet behind the weight of them there’s a weakness. Ren seems to believe in the words, in his capacity for cruelty. She’s not sure if he believes he can follow through on the words.

She says instead, “Why are you telling me this?”

Ren reaches across the table fast as a raptor lunging and his hand catches and squeezes her chin. “Because in only a little while, I will bring you in front of someone who will have no patience for your grudges and fears and concerns. The Supreme Leader is wise and benevolent and with far more capacity for cruelty than either of us. My advice is: lock up your will and your fears. Neither of them will do you much good, where we’re going.”

Rey breathes through her wedged open mouth and is beyond throwing up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone had nights where they've longed to go to sleep but their silly body doesn't understand the necessity of doing so? Let us share in Rey's pain.
> 
> Yep, there's the bastardy Kylo Ren we all know and love, trying to act tough but worrying inside all the while about whether he's up to snuff.
> 
> Kylo Ren's speech about cruelty is paraphrased from a speech in Deathless: namely this part:
> 
> "Oh, I will be cruel to you, Marya Morevna. It will stop your breath, how cruel I can be. But you understand, don’t you? You are clever enough. I am a demanding creature."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really need to come up with titles for these chapters by now.
> 
> I suck at thinking up titles.
> 
> This should be fun.

There’s a chime at the door almost as soon as she’s finished her meal. Ren puts his helmet back on before he allows whoever it is to enter, Rey thinks she might be the only person he’ll show his face to. A Stormtrooper comes in to gather up the tray and the bowl and plate and glass, while Ren moves to stand by the far wall with his arms folded, still looking at her through the mask, always looking. Has he stopped even once, since she leapt out in front of him?

She carefully positions one hand behind her, supporting her weight, waiting until the Stormtrooper’s hands are full.

And then she thrusts herself up off the floor and runs for the door.

 _Something_ grabs her ankle and pulls her legs out from under her. She hits the metal hard. Pain sparks in her chest, chin, mouth, she’s bitten her lip. She looks up and her fingers are only a little way from the door frame. She can’t even push herself up before _something_ pulls again and the door zooms away like she’s on her speeder looking back, and she only manages to cry out once before her back hits the wall, _hard._

“Should you try that again, it will be more painful next time,” Ren says, lowering his arm. The Stormtrooper is down on one knee, picking up the spilled items, not looking at her even once, as far as she can tell. Maybe a constantly thwarted prisoner isn’t worth looking at.

Or maybe they don’t dare pay too much attention. Ren’s insistence on ‘discretion’ comes to mind again.

She pushes herself to sit up and tries to swallow the blood from her lip and breathe, only her lungs get blood instead of air. She coughs it back up and droplets spray everywhere. _What a waste of fluid,_ she thinks automatically, pragmatically, Jakku still in her bones and most of all in her blood.

Ren’s arm _snaps_ back up. He steps forward like he’s going to slam his huge hand over her face, fingers ready to smash her head into the wall, shit is _this_ what’s going to kill her - but he stops before he can quite get around the table.

 _Fuck I didn’t mean to use_ that _much force_ her brain shouts and suddenly she wants to feel her ribs, check if any of them are cracked or broken, which is stupid because she only bit her lip, she’s had worse

wait.

_Wait._

_Something_ slips out of her head. She wants to catch hold of it, but it’s like cold fingers trying to pick up something in the dark. _Something_ scurries back to its owner.

The Stormtrooper’s run off by now - taking a chance to run for the door again with it - and Ren’s hand comes back to his side, curled so tight the glove he’s wearing creaks. “There is nowhere for you to go,” the machine growls, the engine roaring. He’s like a speeder ready to leap out of the driver’s control and smash into something. “There is no way for you to get off this vessel. There is no one to help you. When I tell you to do a thing, you must do it. It is not about wanting or not wanting it. It is about giving your will, your fears, to someone who can teach you to master them.”

Rey stands, runs her tongue across her teeth and lips to gather what’s left of her blood, probes the tear in her mouth. The bleeding’s already slowed. “I don’t think I need help with that.” She tries not to look at his hand again. Her thoughts are speeding up because she only now realises; he had his arm stretched out again just now.

She looks back through her memories of the past - day? Days? When her headscarf was ripped off on Jakku and that sunburst tried to force its way in. When her flesh was too tight and he stood over her before she somehow fell asleep. When she was being dragged over the threshold by her wrists and she saw him out of the corner of her eye, when he was lowering his arm after sitting down when she forced herself up and wobbled to the table to eat for him. When he threw her across the room and, just now, when he thought he’d hurt her enough for her ribs to pierce her lungs and plunged in to check.

She nearly had the truth of it moments before he first took his helmet off, a while ago. How _slow_ has this place made her, that she’s only able to work it out now? Whenever that strange force of _something_ takes her over, each time he’s been reaching out towards her with fingers flexing or twisting. So, so whenever he grabs her without touching her, controls her body, that awful moment when he trapped her in her own flesh; whatever it is, he seems to need at least one arm and hand free to do it.

So.

She could do it, if she’s careful. Wait for him to get close, take out his hands somehow with the blanket if she twisted it up, kick his legs out from under him and then.

Then what? Kick him again and again until he stays down? Until he stops moving? Breathing? Could she do _that?_ Physically she could (maybe) even with the helmet in the way, assuming he doesn’t fight back or get a hand free. But does she have the nerve, the will?

“So says the girl who was terrified when we first met,” Ren is saying. “You thought I was something out of your nightmares. Your fear cripples you.”

“That was,” she says, and doesn’t say because I recognised you, because you are from before Jakku, because I’ve seen you somewhere before and I don’t know _where._

“Go on.” Ren reaches up to take the helmet off once more. A pity he’s so quick at it, otherwise she’d try to rush him while his hands are full.

“That was back on Jakku,” she says instead. _Invite me in, Rey_ , he’d said without using that buzzing motor in his helmet, without his mouth. And what would have happened if she’d said yes? “You. You were in my head.” And he was there again just now, trying to use her hands to check for any damage he might have done, swearing and slipping away before she could catch him. He was in her _head._

“Barely.” He has the helmet in one hand now, probably leaving a hand free to gesture should he need _something_ to grab her with again. “Your mind was screaming at me to stay away.”

 _“Jedi?”_ She doesn’t ask the question of Ren so much as her whole life, which has clearly gone completely mental. A day or two ago she was making her first exploring attempt on the big star-destroyer everyone calls the Blade; what is she _doing_ here, on a living breathing star-destroyer, with a being out of a campfire story or a daydream moving her like a puppet or reading her mind?

She didn’t ask him, but Ren is the one who answers, “What do you know about Jedi.” The whole room _creaks,_ like it’s being crushed down for melting. He starts forward again, even though his hand is still by his side.

“Stories,” she says, ducking around him and staying out of his flesh and blood reach, having to look up now to maintain eye contact because he’s so tall, keeping one eye out to make sure he doesn’t box her into a corner. “Just, stories.” The table hits the back of her legs; she hops up onto it to get to the other side. “People would talk about the days before, the Empire, the Old Republic. Tales to pass the time.”

“Let me see.” Ren’s arm jerks up once more, hand reaching for her face.

Screw _that._ Rey tries to block his wrist, expecting to be stopped or pushed away, but her palm actually catches his sleeve and the flesh beneath, she’s able to clasp and squeeze the bones of his arm on one side and dig her fingers in on the other. Does he feel that? Does it hurt? He sucks in breath through his teeth, his nostrils flare. Good.

But he’s pulling her towards him so she has to scrabble at the edge of the table or else she’ll fall off, and suddenly his other hand’s by her face

_I’m just looking let me see_

_don’t you dare don’t you dare_

his fingers trace her temple as she digs hers in further

there’s no pain this time at least, just

_images she’s already thought of being called back like options on a vid screen_

_standing around on the edge of camp fires, eventually winning a space to sit near the flames and the stories_

_sitting by the depot on long afternoons, scrubbing the salvage, someone else talking to everyone to pass the time_

_hanging around the landing site and helping people load or unload for extra supplies, looking for news about the galaxy, about_

_( **my family** she fights and claws to hide from him, he doesn’t seem to notice)_

_listening to the tales on the edge but never joining in_

_she has no stories other than the one they’re all living_

_no stories_

_no life_

_going back to her home and locking the door against the night-_

“You’re so _lonely.”_ His breath is hot on one cheek, his hand is not on her other cheek, but so near it. The tiny space between his glove and her skin is very warm. “So afraid of being alone.”

“Get out of my _head,_ ” she says

 _Tales of Corellia and Coruscant and Bespin get her through the days and nights and keep her mind off the fear,, Alderaan that was destroyed, how can anyone destroy_ a planet? _Even Tatooine is better than Jakku, says a smuggler she is helping to load scrap metal, Endor the ‘forest moon’ where the Rebellion won against the Empire, Naboo with its painted queen younger than her ruling a whole_ world, _the Hosnian System where the New Republic sits, rotating its government to different worlds so easily_

_stories about the time before the old Empire and the Rebellion wrecked the world her world the world she’s stuck on for now_

_clones and droids and Jedi, generals and commanders, wizards, super beings, tales for children that adults and ancients still half believe_

_but she likes the myths about Luke Skywalker the best, they’ve helped her sleep in the past_

_just myths_

“So isolated. So utterly abandoned,” he mutters, and between breath and breath she wants to stick her nails in his _eyes_ for that. But he does slide back out of her head and take his left hand away. He doesn’t pull his right arm from her fingers. He looks, if anything, uncertain.

She fights back against the crush of fourteen years of misery and coping mechanisms, that he’s just _flicked_ through like she’s a padd instead of a person; pushes her tongue into the tear of her lip and squeezes his wrist hard enough to hurt herself as well. “I won’t let you do that again.”

He’s sucking in air as if he’d just scaled all the way to the top of a hangar bay instead of poking through her head, and whatever she’s doing to his wrist probably isn’t helping, but he still doesn’t move away. “I told you. It’s not about wanting or not wanting.”

She shoves his arm into his chest, pushing him back even as she slides near off the table. He bares his teeth, flexes his hand and his helmet _flies_ up for him to catch. “Leave your old fears behind, Rey. You must have room to fear new things.”

He gestures and a door opens. Not the door that the Stormtroopers come and go through, another one on the wall opposite the bunk. She tries to catch a glimpse of the space beyond but he’s in her way as he marches through - _not_ putting the helmet back on.

She says while she still has a chance, before the door can cut her off, “You’re still afraid too, then.”

The door slams shut before she can see how he reacts, but she knows it’ll hurt. She expects him to come charging back in and braces herself to fight. When he doesn’t she goes over to try and find the seams of the door, some way to force it open, to get _out._

So.

His hands and his fears. Two ways to try and take him down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is brought to you by the Deathless quotes:  
> "When I tell you to do a thing, you must do it. It is not about wanting or not wanting. It is about the will in your jaw, and the egg on your back." 
> 
> (Yeah, that requires context. Koschei was soaking up Marya's fears and pain with an egg rubbed over her back. Like, an actual egg, still in its shell. Plus it's basically a Faberge egg. Russian traditional calming methods and Russian folklore all in one. Woot.)
> 
> "But it is our last night, and I shall soak up all your fears and nightmares and proletariat city-girl terrors. You must have room to fear new things. I shall make you all new, my own revolution, neither red nor white, but black."
> 
> Keep an eye out for this last one. It will likely pop up again later.


	6. Chapter 6

She’s barely found the edge of the door when the light shuts off. Not even fading away but a sudden, total absence. The black’s so shocking that her stomach twists like it might force the food back up, and she has to stop and press her forehead against the wall, dig her nails into her palms, count her breaths. It’s so _dark_ , with no doors for her to bolt shut and keep it out.

It’s Ren. He picked through her head and found this. He took her from Jakku and her waiting, he took her clothes and her _hair_ , now he’s taken the light and he’s taking revenge for what she said. He wants her to scream.

She presses all of herself to the wall so that she won’t cry out. Her eye socket is squashed hard against the metal, a hole in her face, her eye squeezed shut so at least she’ll see light dancing that way. She thinks of the island -

Has he plucked _that_ out of her brain too?

He didn’t say anything about it.

“That’s mine,” she tells him, whether he’s still there behind the wall or has stamped off somewhere else, “that’s **_mine_** , you can’t have it.”

She reaches for the island, the sea rough around its’ edges this time, the mist heavy around the peaks and - how is it she even _knows_ what sea and mist and peaks are? Does she know them from the same place she knows Ren? Does it matter? It’s hers, wherever she knows it from, it belongs to her.

She opens her eyes to the utter dark, only so she can close them more gently this time. Her island only comes when her skin and flesh are loose, when her eyelids can act like a vid screen, not a shield. She turns to put her shoulder blades to the wall, slides a few paces to the left and then down to sit on the floor, so she has something at her back.

Also so that, if Ren _does_ come raging back in at some point, she’s at the perfect height to kick at his ankles and get him on the floor. Then he’ll be hers.

She thinks of a sun. A gentler sun. Heat that doesn’t sink through her flesh and try to drag her down or pulse in her arms, only tracing across her skin, blazing in her hair. She feels heat on her crossed legs from the light and her hands on her knees (which she can see now) and heat from the stone below her too. She thinks of cool wind,

(not hard, this ship is _freezing_ )

soothing on her fever hot arms, whipping at the warmth but never destroying it,passing through her clothes as if it has a mind and thinks it can pull her down from her perch. She thinks of nothing behind her but air, and the sloping rock should she choose to lie back.

She does choose. She leans back on her hands, thinking of weathered stone beneath her fingers and palms, imagining the stretch in her thighs as they adjust to her new position. She looks up to see this world’s sun; a pale thing but more alive than Jakku’s. She closes her island eyes for a moment, for the heat on her eyelids.

She focuses on the feeling of rock beneath her legs and hands, the heat of the sun on her face and eyes, the whip of the wind. The gusts come and go with her breathing, in one side of her nose and out the other and playing about her arms.  

She tries again, without sight’s distraction, to imagine the sounds and smells her island might have if it were real. She can manage the voice of the wind, smaller than Jakku’s dust storms, no screams, just her own breath coming and going through pursed lips. Perhaps some cries from raptors high above.

Scent is impossible. All she can manage is her plant, which never had a scent that she could notice, and the rusty smell of the inside of her canteen for water. So she thinks of the times she took the speeder up and up, into the lower atmosphere, chill and clean. Air so cold it burns as she takes it in.

She wonders if this time she’ll be able to keep her sight on one aspect alone – no. Rey who is on the island can never look at only one thing. She can keep her body in one place with the weight of physical sensations, but her imagined island eyes must constantly look around this dream of a world, the closest thing to peace she’ll find.

Her vision rests for a heartbeat on the nearest island to hers, still so far away she’ll never be able to reach it (not that she wants to) and jumps to the walls that contain the terraced living spaces claimed from the crags,

the stone huts that the walls protect, direct below her

the beginnings of the sheer drop to her left

 the peak to her right that forms the highest point on her island, shadowy even in the sunlight

back to the huts, the sea, the grass just below her knees that she could reach out to touch

huts

walls

around to look at the islands behind her

the horizon

She really makes an effort and gazes down at the huts again. She’s always wondered if someone will step out of them, either in a rare moment where she’s looking directly, or out of the corner of her eye so that they’re gone when she looks again.

She somehow doesn’t care. She’s alone here, but not lonely.

*

Rey comes back to herself in the dark with a stiff cold body and a stale taste in her mouth, but with her heart quiet and her breathing easy again. It’s not comfortable to open her eyes and see nothing, but now she can push herself up to go on searching to find some edge of a door, or some sensor she can trip with-

With what? Her _fingernails?_

She finds the seams of both doors eventually. She presses her cheek and ear to the door the Stormtroopers use, trying to tell what’s going on out there, if there’s any sounds of feet or talking. She hears nothing but the beat of power going through the wall, keeping the door shut and the light out.

She listens to the heartbeat of the ship for a while, measuring it against her own, before moving back to Ren’s door.

This wall might be thinner. There’s a room beyond rather than a corridor; she remembers from the glances she got while being pulled or dragged in and out of here. Ren didn’t put his helmet back on before leaving that way, and from what she could see he wasn’t moving to do that even as the door shut. That means the space beyond is somewhere where people still can’t see him.

If she could hear what’s going on in there, does she want to? Is it a place of refuge for him, like her shelter in the AT-AT, or Plutt with his office? She pushes herself closer, brings her hands up, nails squeezing into her palms again to stay calm. If only she could beat the wall down! Why is he keeping a prisoner so close to his territory? Not just near enough to be easily brought, but so close all he has to do is step through a door?

It could be his cabin. He might be asleep in there.

She uncurls her fists to brace herself against the wall. It would be so easy if only she could get in, _quietly_ , and had something other than her nails to stick into his throat. She could bind his hands with a blanket and, and, and.

And _then_ somehow trust him to lead her to the hangar bay, _without_ raising the alarm and with every Stormtrooper on the destroyer after them?

She could scream and pound until her bones break. She pushes herself away instead and goes to find her own bunk.

* * *

 

At the beginning of the new artificial ‘day’ there’s a fresh set of knits - still black - on the table, some odd wrapped package, and another tray. Why are they giving her so much _food?_ She’ll be as fat as Plutt (don’t think) soon.

And how do they even bring it all in without waking her up? Drugs? Droids? Or her body could still be recovering, keeping her brain from waking too easily, but she’s never been that _tired._ She’d be dead by now back on Jakku, sleeping like this.

She doesn’t touch the food. The wrapped package turns out to be some sharp smelling cloth wipes, the tech version of a sponge bath. No more being forced to strip and go into showers, then, even if they might still be able to watch what she’s doing in here on screens.

She starts with wiping behind her neck – her hair escaped from the binding in the ‘night’ and made her neck sweat – and under her arms, and then stops to think.

She measures the room with her eyes. She does it again with paces. Then she moves all the things on the table to the bunk, pulls off her tunic and rolls up the legs of her trousers, kicks off the useless shoes and starts to run from wall to wall.

She speeds up, and up. She gets fast enough to start catching herself on the walls and pushing off again for more speed, giving her arms something to do. Her body hasn’t forgotten what she’s shaped it for, even after sickness and no real activity for she doesn’t know how long, so she starts jumping up onto the table, and then _over_ the table to slam into the wall each time and push herself back. This way she can’t feel her stomach twisting or the muscles throbbing in her arms. There’s only her heart pounding and her hands slapping against metal and her thighs burning and her breath catching before each burst of speed or jump.

She stops to rest and stuffs bits of loaf into her mouth, drinks to wash them down, then starts up again. This is what she knows. She’s earned this. She deserves it now.

She pretends she has her staff back. She remembers the brilliant moment when she smashed Plutt in the skull, first in her head and then with her body. She slashes at Teedo on its luggabeast as it sneers at her, and kicks one of Plutt’s goons away from menacing old Boobajo. Her hair’s loose again, getting in her eyes and mouth. She shakes it back and pictures a Stormtrooper to knock down, like she should have when the First Order first showed up. She should have fought.

She breaks again for food, popping the dehydrated shapes that she thinks might be fruit into her mouth and drinking again to soften them up. Sweet, so _sweet!_  And probably harder to drug – unless they coated the things with it.

She simply starts running again, looking to burn through whatever they might be dosing her with. The floor is starting to make her slip and she’s not catching herself on the walls, more like smashing, and she’s laughing when she can get enough breath.

“It’s mine,” she says with any other breath she can get. “It’s mine, I’m mine. _Mine.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is NOT brought to you by a Deathless quote. (Not yet, anyway; it needs a bit of an edit - so what's new - and I might sneak one in later.)
> 
> This chapter IS brought to you by the deep and unending love I have for Skellig Michael, Luke's chosen place of sanctuary in-Star Wars-universe. Is the island Rey imagines to cope with her loneliness ACTUALLY the one Luke is hiding on? Who knows? (Though it'd be amazing if it was.) My words cannot possibly do this wonderful place justice. You need to see it. You need to go there, if you can. When you reach the top and see the view, you know why the monks chose to establish a monastery there, and why the Jedi might have come into being there as well.
> 
>  
> 
> Here, have some pictures I took the second to last time I was there. http://aquitainequeen.tumblr.com/post/112362372242/youll-probably-see-this-in-the-force-awakens-soon#notes
> 
>  
> 
> Also, find some rather better pictures here.  http://www.worldheritageireland.ie/skellig-michael/built-heritage/the-monastery/ Rey is sitting on the craggy bit just above the monastery, above the grassy area.
> 
> What Rey does in this chapter, as I'm sure a lot of readers might guess, is a method of visualization, very helpful in coping with stress and anxiety - which I'm pretty sure Rey suffers from a lot, natch. It helps a lot to have some relaxing music, although that really isn't an option in this case.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, people. Urg. I will be coming back to fix it up some more, but for now enjoy.
> 
> ...
> 
> *sticks on What Is This Feeling from Wicked, for when a certain two somebodies in this story speak directly to each other for the first time*

There’s nothing else to do but sit on the bunk and wait for whatever comes next. Or run until she’s tired, and then wait until she has enough strength to run again. So she runs.

She rations the chem wipes for when her feet get too slick, but there’s still the tunic to mop up sweat when it gets in the way. Her hair sticks to her scalp like she’s back on a scavenging run and the tunic trousers, baggy as they are, cling to her skin. She runs faster to get away from the feeling.

To add some variety, she imagines running to her speeder because a sandstorm’s coming to eat her. Hopping across hot sand and bearing the pain before she managed to barter for a pair of boots. Ducking and weaving through the Starship Graveyard when some other scavenger thought they could take her haul, before she learned to fight back. Fleeing from the big collapse of _Exaltation_ when it decided to finally die and take her with it; running from the crashing bits of wreckage that nearly smashed her life out into the sand so many times.

She survived. She always survives.

When she slaps her hands on the doors she tries again to feel for some panel, switch, way _out._

Each time she really has to rest she dithers over where to do it; by one of the doors, so she’ll have a chance to get out if someone comes, or stay by the bunk or the other wall so they don’t think her a threat and come in ready to fend her off? She decides to stick to the corners mostly, so she can look harmless and still make a dash for it.

Of course, it’s precisely when she’s sitting in the corner furthest from both doors that something chirps to her left, and a droid suddenly appears right out of the wall, clutching a tray. There’s barely time for her to get half way up before the droid slides the latest meal onto the table, swivels and darts back into the new hole in the wall.

She’s onto her belly scrabbling like a lizard and ready to force her way after the droid into the ship’s innards, she’d _finally_ have something to _work_ with - the door comes back down, sneakily quiet but so hard she knows it’d have broken her wrist or even severed it if she hadn’t pulled back in time.

She rests her temple against the floor for a few moments, listening as her heart peaks and settles down. The cold helps. Then she gets up and goes to see what they’ve sent her this time.

She takes it slower while consuming the second meal. Kicks and punches rather than running, twenty on each side, repeat. It gets her through what passes for afternoon and into evening, until she finally strips off the trousers and underwear and begins wiping herself down, rubbing some sort of dry wash through her hair. If only Plutt had been trading out _these_ things as well as ration portions!

She piles the remains from breakfast and her old knits on the table, pulls on the new ones and sits down to wait. She has to prop up her head with a hand because she’s so tired, she overdid it, and she keeps thinking of the Stormtroopers outside and Ren on the other side of the wall, all saying **_good_** _little scavenger, you’ve learned to obey._

We’ll see, she doesn’t say.

The wall buzzes after perhaps a thousand heartbeats of sitting and ignoring her aching muscles. The droid, the same one, motors in with another tray. It aims for the space she’s left clear before her. She’s fairly sure it sneaks a peek at her while it puts the load down, a slot opening on the side nearest her in case it needs to pop out something like a shock probe.

She likes that it’s allowed to retaliate, at least against prisoners. Flesh-and-blood beings so often programme droids not to fight back, after the terror of the fighting machines and artificial intelligences of the Clone Wars.

“Sorry for earlier.” She pushes her leftovers and castoffs towards it on a platter.

It rolls back a little in confusion, rolls forward again, takes the offering, beeps [ _Wow, thanks, insane flesh-bag_ ] turns its body about while still keeping its eyes fixed on her and trundles back to its doorway, never looking away until the door closes. It’s the first thing that’s made her want to smile in days and she just can’t shove it down, she has to pretend to yawn. It’s better they don’t know that she can understand binary.

She’s part way through the stew when Ren comes in, still wearing the helmet from the sound of his breathing. Should she be worried? She keeps her eyes on her spoon.

 “Constantly running.” He exhales slowly, the machine whining. “Why?”

“It gives me something to do.” She dips some bread into the sauce. “And all this food’ll be making me slow before long, if I’m not careful.”

“Perhaps it already has. You honestly believed you could escape through the droid hatch.”

She shrugs, scooping up the last of the meat. “Three days ago, I could have made it, easily.” Then she looks up quickly as he sets something like a canteen made out of glass down on the table, very near her left hand. She quickly brings it back to her lap, along with her right. “What’s this?”

“Jhantorian wine,” he says, as if that means something.

She keeps her hands safe in her lap, especially when he reaches for the canteen again, and her empty cup. “It sounds costly.”

“No doubt. This particular vintage is one of Hux’s favourites, and not merely because it was a favoured drink during the Galactic Empire. Remember, what I said about his preferences when eating?” Ren cracks the container open and fills her cup to the brim. “Far too sweet, of course. Hux is afraid of bitterness. He rants against decadence, and yet he still behaves like a spoiled princess when it comes to his personal tastes.”

He slides the cup back over to her. “I choose to savour bitterness. It’s born from experience. The privilege of someone who’s truly lived. You should learn to prefer it too. It might.”

He doesn’t finish his speech, or his stray thought, or whatever those last words were.

She doesn’t look at the dark liquid in the cup. She looks at him. A man who’s grown over-tall on _real_ food, wearing fine clothes no one stuck on Jakku could ever dream of, talking about wine from far-off star systems so casually. So dismissively.

You with your pale skin like that spoiled princess you compare Hux to, face and rich hair as soft as a painted Queen of Naboo, you who can drag people away from their lives and hopes, what do you know? What do _you_ know about bitterness? About thousands of scratches on the wall, watching yourself grow unrecognisable whenever you manage to find a reflection? Cutting yourself open time after time and squeezing out hatred, before it poisons your blood and gets to your brain?

Bitterness is not something to salvage and store. It’s something that needs to be oiled and soothed and scraped away, or it’ll rust and eat your heart out.

“I prefer sweet to bitterness,” she says. Which is pretty weak compared to his big speech, but it still makes him inhale sharply and drop to one knee, hard.

“Then you will likely enjoy this.” He reaches out, and she catches for his wrist because she can imagine him holding her still with his power, mouth wedged open, and pouring the wine into her with a free hand. He slams his palm down on the table instead.

“If I’m given the chance to drink it by myself,” she says, setting her hand back down near the cup, “then I just might.”

He doesn’t move to grab her again, or flick his fingers and have her picking the cup up under his direction, but he could, he would. Better get it over with. She lifts this Jhantorian wine to her mouth with both hands, taking care that it only barely wets her lips.

Even that small taste buzzes in her mouth. It tastes of something old and left to die and decay, a tang that stabs up into her nose, covered under, yes, sweetness that could make her sick again. She’s thirsty again from just a sip.

“Why did you bring me this?” she asks. She meant why he’d inflict such an odd tasting drink on her, but really she could just as easily ask why he’s bringing such apparently precious wine to a prisoner at all. Or why he’s bringing it _now._

 ** _Good_** little scavenger, you’ve finally learned to stay in your cage, have a treat.

“Are you truly so averse to the taste of other worlds?” Ren is saying. “Perhaps I found you too late and Jakku has ruined you.”

 _There._ She’s found it again, the crux of the matter. “You never truly answered my questions from that first time, really. If I offer to finish this-“ lifting the cup again, “-would you do a better job? An accurate answer for every drink? How did you know where to find me?”

She can tell Ren stares at her. Behind the mask she can think of his eyes wide and his lips parted, or maybe pressed together. His fingers would dig into the metal of the table if they only could. The engine growls, “I won’t answer such questions now. In time.”

“Fine.” She sets the cup down, maybe harder than she - yes, some of the wine spills out and onto her fingers. Her hand goes to her mouth by reflex, she sucks the liquid off her skin. “Then can you at least tell me, what your Supreme Leader’s going to do to me? Kill me, trade me, hoard me, put me on display?”

His fingers dig in deeper. “That remains to be seen.”

And that’s no answer.

“But we will find out soon enough.”

He said we will find out, _we,_ meaning he doesn’t even know what’s going to happen, and _soon enough_ what does that mean, is this why he brought the wine _, **good** little scavenger you’ve earned one last treat,_ she thought there’d be more time.

She feels sick again. She grasps for the island before she remembers no, not in front of him, not when he can dip his hand into her brain and scoop it up out of her. _It’s mine, it’s mine._ She piles sand on top of her island to conceal it, grains and dunes and wrecks. She imagines kneeling in the Graveyard as the _Exaltation_ comes down again, only this time she doesn’t run.

“You will not be killed.” The machine of his mask is low now, at rest. “If you were meant to die, I would have dealt with you on Jakku myself.”

There it is again.

It’s harder to tell when he has the mask on, but she can still catch that trace of weakness. He does believe in the rightness of someone, systems away from them, deciding that she should die; he even believes that he should kill her if so ordered. Like his words about his own cruelty, he doubts if he’s actually capable of it.

He clearly won’t leave until she finishes the wine, so she picks the cup up again.

* * *

 

It’s the huge metal Stormtrooper that comes in the next morning, just as the droid’s left after depositing the latest tray, as she’s preparing herself to run. They tell her to “Eat. Clean yourself. Now,” then step back to let the door slam shut.

BY the time Rey’s counted to two hundred, pulled on the latest knits and forced down the more solid items off the tray, the door opens again and a standard white Stormtrooper motions for her to come out.

The moment she steps outside, the Stormtrooper, is it the same one? They’ve taken her wrists and another is putting restraints around them _._ Though they do lead her now instead of dragging her, over to the metal Stormtrooper that another one of them is calling ‘captain’.

‘Captain’, just like Ren, seems to want her to walk alongside them, and by now she’s used to the shoes and manages to keep up. She holds her face still as they pass several markers she half remembers from ‘days’ before.

They’re heading down a sloping corridor, and she’s only just now realized they’re heading back to the hangar bay, when ‘Captain’ speaks. “I am aware that you were mishandled by several of my subordinates.”

There are several ways to reply to that. None of them very helpful to her right now, and ‘Captain’ doesn’t seem to be looking for a response anyway, so she plays safe and says nothing. But it seems they _did_ expect her to respond, because after a few heartbeats they continue: “The offending persons have been disciplined.”

 _Disciplined_.  That doesn’t sound any better than Ren’s order for _discretion_. The one who grabbed her by the arm and made her scream, the two or three who stripped her, the one who shouted at her from the ceiling and tried to threaten her into hurrying up, are they in the crowd marching behind her and ‘captain’? In their own cells, recovering from what’s been done to them?

Are they being disposed of through holes in the walls, like her clothes and her hair?

“Good,” she manages to say. Out of the corner of her sight she sees ‘Captain’ tilt their head towards her. She fixes her eyes on the entrance to the hangar bay and wonders if the ones who hurt her would have been _disciplined_ if she wasn’t Ren’s salvage.

It’s like stepping out from the shadow of a wreck into the high heat; the noise of the bay hits and washes around her and she’d stop if she could, but one of them has her by the elbow and tows her over to – yes, Hux, who’s turning around from other humans in black to watch them coming, his hands clasped behind his back, as if he’s in cuffs like her.

They all come to a stop in front of him, Rey still slipping a bit after all. Bloody _bloody_ shoes. “Lord Ren’s prisoner, General Hux,” ‘Captain’ is saying.

“Excellent, Phasma.” Now Hux looks at Rey like she’s stolen his food. Actually, no, he looks like he’s wondering if he can slit her open and get his wine back that way. Unfair, when she drank so little of the stuff. He should try it on Ren instead; he took the canteen back to his side of the wall mostly full.

“Not a complete waste of time and resources, I see,” Hux says. “Scrape off the dirt and you’re _somewhat_ presentable.”

“The wine helped.” Still pretty weak, but utterly worth it for how much paler his face turns. “It was delicious,” she lies, and he steps forward looking as if he’d rip her throat out but he can’t, he can’t _he can’t._

**_“Hux.”_ **

She doesn’t turn to look at Ren approaching until those blue eyes leave hers first. Finally, Hux has to turn and she can sneak a peek. She’d forgotten how Ren moves when not in an enclosed space, lurching and stamping towards them, still like a raptor. Always like a raptor.

“What is the meaning of this, Hux?” he says as he stops very close to her, ‘Captain’ – Phasma, rather – moving quickly out of the way.    

“Merely ensuring that your cargo was ready to be transferred, Lord Ren,” Hux replies, stepping right up close, face to visor with Ren. “It would not do to prolong the Supreme Leader’s wait any further. Would it?”

She expects Ren to hiss. Perhaps even use his power to throw Hux backwards, send him skidding across the floor to crash into something. All he does is drone out agreement, turn and start towards a familiar black craft. A nudge, not a shove, in her back and she starts after him.

She’s left to walk alongside Ren again. She can see a planet out through the opening of the bay, a huge one, the most bizarre thing she’s ever seen, right up until _something_ twists her neck and she’s looking at the inside of the hangar, and Ren.

“I want to see,” she manages to get out under her breath.

She doesn’t know how he does it, but his mask’s voice is pitched so low she can barely hear it, let alone anyone around them. “Must I repeat myself about wanting and not wanting? Keep your will locked tight behind your jaw, Rey, and drive out your fears, and we will make something glorious.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is brought to you by these gifs of Daisy Ridley training for, I presume, Episode VIII: http://obiwanssixthrobe.tumblr.com/post/139188744687/daisyridley-excuse-my-language-but-i-could-not
> 
> This chapter is also brought to you by the following quote from Deathless:  
>  "The vineyards that gave us this wine also provide the wine for Comrade Stalin's table," he said one night with a sly grin. "You will remember what I said about children and Papas, and who eats first, and who eats last." Koschei the Deathless made a face as he tasted the wine. "It is far too sweet. Comrade Stalin fears bitterness and has the tastes of a spoiled princess. I savor bitterness - it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived. You, too, must learn to prefer it. After all, when all else is gone, you may still have bitterness in abundance."
> 
> Ren, of course, does not complete the last part of this quote, since he's sincerely hoping not to have to endure bitterness in the future. Let's see how that turns out.
> 
> The sassy droid with the shock probe looks, in my head, like a shinier more sarcastic version of WALL-E.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know how I'm always saying I'm coming back to redo chapters?
> 
> Well, I really am in this case. Really. Please accept my apologies for the state of the ending. I swear it will soon be all better.

The star-destroyer, it turns out, wasn’t really _that_ cold. In the grand scheme of things it was just pleasantly cool. A little precious time resting in the shade before heading back out into the high heat.

Now, stepping out into this new hangar bay with a new void behind her, this, _**this**_ is cold. This is nights that she bolted the door to keep out, shadows of wrecks where the sun never reaches, iced drinks she sometimes managed to barter for, cutting the inside of her mouth like a blade.

She manages to get down the ramp without slipping. She has to curl in on herself to trap her warmth, her flesh pulling **_sucking_** the heat from her hands and face to store in her chest.  She can’t feel her fingers. Wait. No, there’s still some feeling when she flexes them and they light up in pain. She’d stick her hands under her arms like last time, but the cuffs mean she can only press them to her chest and tuck her head down and try to breathe, to pant some life back into them.

She’s honestly wondering what it would be like to grab Ren’s cloak and duck under it, she’s so _cold_ and at least he’s warm and the space around him would be too. Right up until he knocked her off the gangplank for doing it, probably, or just choked her.

She reaches the floor of the hangar bay as she tries to straighten herself out and up again, clenching her mouth shut tight so her teeth don’t rattle together because she’s cold cold _cold,_ trying not to think of Ren telling her to keep her will locked tight in her jaw.

He’s stopped now, speaking with Hux and _another_ human who’s come forward with his own smaller entourage, Phasma standing with them but not quite part of the discussion. All of them in their respective cloaks or heavy outer layers to keep out the cold, ignoring the wind.

And her.

So. So, so.

Stormtroopers to her left and right, no way to get to the walkways on either side. She can see slots in the side of the chasm ahead of her, _why_ do they have a massive chasm in the floor? Probably for ships and other craft, anyway there’s lots of potential handholds to get down to a lower level, if only she could get over there with no one noticing and wasn’t wearing cuffs and could trust her hands.

She takes a chance to look around and see where the cold blasting through her clothes, right to her bones, is coming from.

It’s a world.

A whole world across and around and below her.

She opens her mouth and lets the cold in trying to understand it. The earth rising up, not like dunes but like the wreckage of star-destroyers, she didn’t know the ground could _do_ that. She didn’t know that trees, they must be trees, could sit on these sloping masses, like short bristling hairs on a being’s head. Whatever the stuff that covers the landmasses and sits on top of some of the trees like dust after a sandstorm, she didn’t know there could be so much of something so dead white it hurts her eyes worse than the cold.

“I didn’t know, I didn’t know.” Though she did know vaguely in a far off way that they were taking her somewhere, she never really considered where that would be. Easier to imagine an endless series of metal rooms and corridors containing and storing her, transporting her to whatever eventual use she’ll be put to. Maybe she even knew there’d be a new planet, unless they planned to keep her on ships for the rest of –

-however long she lasted.

She didn’t know it would be this, that there’s a world like this, a cold world with enormous heights of its own, and so many trees and air that cuts the lips to breathe.

“I didn’t know,” and she steps forward once and then again when nothing freezes her limbs or twists her head way and takes the rest of her with it, getting closer to the edge, she wants to _see_ and nothing is stopping her.

Something does stop her, but it’s not _something,_ which is a nice change. A solid hand hard on her arm yanking her back, pulling her around to come face to face with a Stormtrooper.

“I didn’t know there was anything like _this,”_ she tells them, trying to make them understand.

She’s pretty certain whoever’s under that planet-white helmet is heaving in frustration, but they just march her back to the group, letting go and pushing her forward before they get within arm’s reach of Ren. Who stares at her with one of his hands out yet again, already tight in a fist and his glove creaking.

She just stares back at him and waits. Her teeth clatter before she can stop them, she has to close her mouth shut and keep herself stiff.  She huffs out a breath and watches it leave her in a cloud, like smoke. She didn’t know there were planets where it’s cold enough for that to happen, when their suns are high in the sky.

He doesn’t turn away from her as he says “Commander, make certain the signal is clear.”

* * *

 

More corridors _again._ Warm enough that she doesn’t see her breath anymore and Hux hands his enormous coat and hat off to someone at some point when she wasn’t watching him. Cold enough that she’s glad they’re all moving along so fast. Or partly glad. She breathes on her hands, focuses on the moisture growing on her nails with each huff, counts the beats of her heart. _Anything_ so she doesn’t have to think about what happens when they finally stop, because it probably isn’t a cell she’s going to this time.

They turn a corner and oh.

Oh.

Definitely not a cell.

“Wait,” she says as Ren grips the cuffs with his invisible force and tugs, taking her with them; “no,” as he pulls her over the threshold; **_“no,”_** as she’s sliding along the walkway behind him in her stupid shoes with no grip on the metal, into the vast chamber with that empty waiting chair.

He drags her until they’re both in front of the stone chair that’s too large for any being, it can’t be a chair then, is it some kind of altar? What the hells are they going to _do_?

And right then the cuffs pull her down, pain shocking up from below as her palms and knee hit the floor hard. She’s left crouched over, still managing to rest on one foot but so many weak points exposed and ready for them to use to hurt her.

When Ren comes level with her she kicks out at him just as hard as he forced her down to the floor. She gets him right in the back of the calf and she could howl, could _scream_ with the satisfaction when it nearly takes the leg out from under him.

“Let me _up,”_ she hisses at him _._ She tries to get another kick in but he stops her with a gesture, not even looking down, mask and the eyes beneath fixed on the chair.

“You will be _silent,”_ and it’s not a command so much as truth; she feels a _pinch_ in her throat, tries to shout, can’t.

Hux moves to stand on her right side as the hum of a holographic projection starts up and blue washes over them all. He speaks, not sharp anymore but fluid and oozing, like oil. “Supreme Leader, you honour us.”

She looks up to see the image of yet another human-

Well. It might have been human once. She can’t tell. It might be some other species, but she can’t tell that either. She’s never seen anyone or _thing_ like it.

Or.

No.

That corpse from the TIE fighter that she buried a while back, withered and shrinking and stretched out over poor baked bones. Only that corpse didn’t look like it had mouldered in the dark, it didn’t have black eyes that still rolled down to look at her, or open a lipless gash of a mouth, and oh _stars_ it didn’t speak like this one is speaking: “Kylo Ren. I see that you have fulfilled your mission.”

It, he, it’s alive but it _can’t_ be that big in real life. Humanoids can’t grow that tall, their bodies would never manage to sustain themselves, this hologram must be huge, magnified tens of times over. What kind of device had to be rigged in order to make this setup work? She looks around for projectors on the walls, down at the chair and its base, calculates how much power would be needed for what kind of system, all so she doesn’t have to look at the image of the thing sitting in front of them.

Ren is saying, “As you ordered, Supreme Leader, it was done. This is the girl.”

He doesn’t say her name. Does this being already know it? Is that how Ren knew who she was, from being given something to track her with? She can’t help but watch a hand flexing, a robe shifting, but she doesn’t look up further, she won’t look, if she looks she’s lost. She swallows again and again so she won’t be sick on her knees in front of these two, and whatever that thing on the other side of the call is.

“This pleases me.” And the holograms hums as it shifts. Towards her.

“Rey,” the corpse’s voice is murmuring, no, hissing, no, whispering. “Rey.”

Yes, this is where Ren knows her name, not from wherever she saw him before Jakku but from this corpse; and she should have run when Ren was coming, coming, coming for her in his black ship with a raptor’s face over his human one and cuffs for her wrists, knowing her name.  

“Rey. Look at me.”

She feels Ren shifting at her side, ready to grasp the outside of her throat as well, force her to look up. She won’t give him the satisfaction; she starts at the corpse’s hands and gazes up and up, up.

The star-destroyer wasn’t really that cold compared to this planet, and what she felt when she saw Ren back on Jakku wasn’t really terror, compared to this. To the way it’s _looking_ at her.

 _“Rey.”_ It breathes like someone who’s drunk something clear and cold. One of the arms twitches, as if the corpse will reach forward like Ren, dig into her and scoop her up. If it tries to get in-

-it’s looking away and she’s falling forward, barely keeping herself up with bone-weary arms. “She has been under your observation for several days now, Kylo Ren. Your verdict?”

What?

“I have tested her defences. She is completely untrained, but she has the potential to be strong with the Force.”  

What?

“So I have perceived. What is to done with her?”

 ** _What?_**   she asks them all without a sound, she shouts to be heard but Ren still has her throat in his grip and all she can do is wheeze.

“Her lack of training must be remedied, of course.”

What _training?_

“Do you volunteer yourself for such a further task, Kylo Ren?” And there, that change in the corpse’s voice, that’s dangerous, she stops struggling.

What are you doing? she asks Ren, no one giving any sign of noticing.

“I do, if doing so will bring us closer to our ultimate goal.”

What do you mean?

“I wonder,” the corpse says.

“Can you doubt my loyalty, Supreme Leader?”

She crouches and watches Ren, standing before this being like she’s done so many times in front of Plutt, salvage set on the desk, pleading inside that the fat lump will be generous. Only he’s bargaining to keep what he’s found, and if this corpse isn’t pleased with the bargain-

“Very well. She is yours.” The corpse sits back, all too easy. “I give her to you as apprentice. You will keep me appraised of her training at all times. I trust you, Kylo Ren, to prove yourself worthy of such an honour.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader,” but the hologram and the corpse have gone before Ren’s even finished speaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is brought to you by the Deathless quote:
> 
> "Just you wait," he hissed. "Just you wait. Papa Koschei is coming, coming, coming, over the hills on his red horse, and he's got bells on his boots and a ring in his pockt, and he knows your name, Marya Morevna."
> 
> Yes, they are indeed on Starkiller Base. Not that Rey knows that.


	9. Chapter 9

“An apprentice,” Hux says. And then, when Ren doesn’t say anything, his voice gets harder. “Why was **_I_** not informed of this outcome?”

“Perhaps because it is not the concern of the First Order.” Ren doesn’t sound as scathing as she knows by now he can be. If anything he sounds as if his mind’s on something other than Hux opposite him, and her on the floor below him. Could he get so distracted that, if she struggled enough, he lost his hold on her? But then there’ll be Hux as well, and Phasma waiting by the door-

“if she is to remain here, it is most certainly _my_ concern. Unless you plan to take her-”

“No. Not at this present time.”

Take me _where?_   She tries to shift so her right knee doesn’t press so much into her stomach and ribs, but she just stretches all her muscles the wrong way and squashes the food that’s left inside her as well. She wouldn’t have had this problem two or three, or _however_ many days ago it was. Being shut up in unending metal rooms is going to ruin her-

“I will _not_ have her pose a risk to the security of this project.”

“You worry that she will manage to discover your base’s secrets?” Oh, to be free and kick Ren’s legs out from under him.

“I am concerned by _any_ unstable element. She is an unpredictable factor. She has attempted to escape from the moment that you apprehended her.” Hux had stepped closer now, standing near her right shoulder and hot on her side, not close enough to touch, still too close. She’s so vulnerable like this if he decides to kick her somewhere fragile or _stamp_ down on her spine. “She is clearly disinclined to obey you.” 

“And your troops are clearly not as efficient or discrete as you repeatedly claim.”

Hux breathes hard, probably through his nose from the sound of it. “Regardless, Lord Ren, I still do not need to keep _my_ subordinates in restraints. _Or_ gagged.”

 _Oooo._ That one was _good._ Only now is she realising these two huge human men are honestly just like Teedo, squabbling over territory and spoils, lashing out and scoring hits. It’s so familiar and stupid she curls into herself and laughs, and it’s, it’s-

-she is not going to be a way for these two to attack each other.

The laugh gives something back to her, something she didn’t know that hologram of the corpse has swept aside in that stare it pinned her with. She twists her body about and looks up at Ren, looking down at her. She pulls back her lips and can still hiss through her throat at him; it sounds like an overheated engine. She shouts at him so hard she can hear the muscles in her jaw creak, her lips stick together and pop apart: Let. _Me._ **_UP._**

Hux has stepped away. Presumably so he doesn’t end up with her splattered all over his trousers and boots. Ren’s the one breathing hard now –

-but he only rattles in and out twice before he says “True,” to Hux and _“yes,”_ to her, as it feels like a current turns off and the cuffs snap open and drop to the floor. Even as she pushes up from her hands and foot there’s an arm hooked around her, pulling up, hot against her collar bones, such a perfect position for him to pull tight and cut off her air.

She ends up on her feet and nearly off them again, falling back against him until his hands close around her elbows to keep her away from him, though not too far away. He’s as hot at her back as Hux was-

Hux is looking from Ren, to her, to Ren again. She likes his expression that she was just in time to see, dismay forced down and locked away with a blink and swallow. He didn’t expect this, he doesn’t like not anticipating it, he didn’t want her out of the cuffs, he’s regretting his outburst. She wants to see that reaction again. Let someone else be as confused and ignorant and afraid (he was _afraid_ ) as her for once.

“Issue her with appropriate security restrictions, if it eases your mind,” Ren says. “There will be no further attempts to escape.”

Yes, there will be, she doesn’t say, not even with her voice sealed off. Too much chance she’ll be caught saying it by Hux.

Who twists his own lips and says “Add her to your hoard, then,” as he turns jerky as a droid and walks back to the doors, back to Phasma left outside.

She’s still watching him go when metal brushes her ear. Ren grips tighter so she can’t get away, though at least he isn’t pulling her full against him while his raptor’s mask traces her shoulder, her cheek. “You will walk with me. There _will_ be no further attempts to escape. You are my student.”

I am _not._ She puts so much force into shaping and thinking it that there’s a whisper from her throat, her voice bursting through his grip, **_“not.”_**

“I can lock you inside your own body again, every muscle screaming in pain, and carry you,” he hums, not even sounding annoyed. “Or you can walk with me freely. But you will come with me.”   

* * *

 

He doesn’t lead her back to the craft in the freezing hangar bay, or to a cell. At some point after ages of corridors he stops, presses a spot on the wall and stands aside to let her see that it’s another room. Larger than the one she was stored in, no bunk built into the wall but a table with actual chairs, lots of them, drawn in around it.

She thinks of that last day at the table in Plutt’s depot, scrubbing that piece of salvage, the old woman opposite her who she always sits with, who she trades clean scrubbing cloths with but has never spoken to. There were so many people coming and going at Niima Outpost she never spoke to. How many people sit at _this_ table? Doing what? And how many people is she ever going to see again? Is this going to be the rest of her life, pulled out of rooms and pushed back in when Ren’s done with her?

The door beeps shut and Ren marches past, to the table, beyond the table, to the door on their right. He leaves her alone.

She tries both doors. When she spots the one on the other side of the room she tries it as well, just for something to do. None of them open for her.

She looks for something to pry open one of the door pads and tinker with the wiring. Nothing.

Is this going be her life from now on, too? Forever waiting for _him_ to come back and pull her out of storage, reprogramming her into something that suits his needs? Hux did say that Ren could add her to his hoard.

But before that, Ren said that Hux was to issue her with security restrictions. If there are some places she can’t go, there must be some places she will be able to, by herself, at some point in the future.

What does he mean, that she’s his student? What would the other…not _options_ , it’s not like she has a choice here, but what would the other outcomes have been if he hadn’t wanted to keep her? What if he’d delivered her to that corpse, looking like it’s been waiting for her for so long?

She picks up the padd from the table to look closer. She’s not good with working wireless at a distance, but perhaps she can rewrite it, turn it into an interpreter, talk through it to the door and the code that keeps it shut? It isn’t locked, good.

Oh. She can’t understand the writing that appears on screen. Or find any options to turn it to binary either. Or any other symbols she recognises. Great.

What is he _doing_ in there?

This time she does press her ear against the seam of the door. His door? There’s not so much of a pulse in the walls as on the star-destroyer, so she breathes slow and calm and focuses everything on her ear and the space between the metal, minute but still there.

All she gets back is her own heartbeat.

There’s nothing to do now but retreat to visualizing her island. With Ren so close, possibly done with whatever he went in there to do, and ready to march back in at any moment and capture her island before she can hide it.

Or, she could dismantle the padd.

The back of it is hard to prize open, but she manages to do it even with short nails, and after that it’s just a matter of lifting up layer after layer and teasing them free from the tangle below. She spreads the padd’s innards across the desk to figure them out. Display module, touchscreen window, application processor, dual-core processor, accelerator, hardware core, flash drive, modules and chips, battery pack, enclosures to house it all. She longs for pincers to gets a closer look, particularly at the battery, but her fingers aren’t that clever.

How fast can she put it back together again?

The first time is slow, making sure everything fits together. After that it’s easy, timing herself for each opening and closing.   

The brush at her waist jolts her from the process. There’s another droid, much larger than the one on the star-destroyer and made out of a darker metal, to fit its surroundings.   

Hello, she dares and “Hello,” comes out of her throat, not creaking or groaning like she feared.

She didn’t think he’d cut off her voice forever. Of course not. She’s just putting her head down in her hands for a moment because she wants a better look at the droid. 

[Hello, master] it says.

 _What._ “What?”

[Lord Kylo Ren has assigned me to you, master. I am to check on your condition.] It swivels to move around to the other side of the chair [He wanted to know if you were running again. I can tell him that you were sitting.]

Is the droid trying to be funny? They might be. She’s never thought of having a droid, or rather sharing her living space with one. Keeping herself fuelled and in working order was a full time job, never mind providing for the upkeep of another being, trading the chance of her own portions for oil or charges. “What’s your name?”

The droid blurts something with no meaning, perhaps in surprise. She wonders if she should rephrase that as an order, decides to leave it for now and maybe they will tell her later on, when they’re more familiar with each other.

They say [V0-LC-8.]

“I’m Rey,” she offers.

[Yes, I know. Master,] they add quickly.

“Right. Of course you do.” She slides off the chair to get closer to them, though of course they backtrack away. “May I look at you closer, V0-LC-8?”

From this height, from their line of sight, they probably can’t see the padd, currently only half reassembled, but they can also probably calculate what she was doing with her hands only a little while earlier. [Why?] they say, with a surprising amount of suspicion.

“A way to pass the time. I won’t touch you, I promise. Just let me look?”

So the droid lets her look at their body, the shape of the arms, the make of the treads. It does eventually let her trace her fingers over all the seams where doors will open, if they wish it, to pop out tools or weapons. She doesn’t ask what’s behind them. “You could do with a clean,” she says when a faint layer of grime comes off on the pads of her fingers, and V0-LC-8 mutters something garbled and then [I always come out of there filthy], so Rey opens her tunic and slips an arm out so she can use the empty sleeve to wipe the grime off.

She’s asking V0-LC-8 questions about the updates in droids and the progression from Imperial construction to First Order, trying to phrase her questions to actually get straight answers, when Ren’s door hisses open. V0-LC-8 does not make a sound, they only dart back and away from her. [I must go for now, Master Rey.]

“Right,” she says again, sitting back and pulling the tunic around her, not getting up. “I’ll see you later, then.”    

[Yes.] And then, quite quiet, [I think like you best, Master Rey. None of the others ever asked my name or looked so close at me. Or cleaned me.]

They speed off in the direction of Ren’s door, probably how they got in to start with. Part of her watches through the gap under the table as Ren barely stands aside to give V0-LC-8 enough room to pass, but he doesn’t stop them either. Part of her thinks _the others._

She does have to shift out of the way and stand up as the other droids who’ve come in lay the table. She watches one scoop up and carry away the parts of the padd, muttering to themself, and when she looks back they’re done and drawing away from a spread very like that first meal Ren gave her. There’s soup and the greenest stuff she’s even seen all sliced up, something that looks like a smaller, plucked raptor steaming in its dish, pale moist little packages stuffed to bursting and sweating, a bowl piled full of more fruits _and_ a familiar glass canteen. Hux could have gotten his wine back from Ren after all.

Ren’s left the helmet off. And the cloak, and yes, the gloves. He says “You disassembled my padd,” and actually sounds confused. Of course he’d be confused.

“There was else nothing for me to do.” She takes time pulling her arm through the sleeve and fastening up the tunic once more, and once she’s nearly done she has to undo it all and begin again because she started in the wrong place. She asks him, staring at the offending clasps, “Is this all Hux’s food _again?”_

“Hardly. You are now my full responsibility.”

Meaning he doesn’t want anything of Hux near what’s his, then. Jealous. “So, I’m only to be fed from your own hand?”

She catches the twitch at his lips and the twitch in his hand; probably trying not to make the table rattle again. “Comparing me to Plutt, again? Sitting on a pile of portions to be rationed out when it suits me?”

He looks at the table of food so casually, as he says that, so dismissive, because of _course_ he can find better things than food to collect and store in cold rooms and waste away himself away poring over. Blood-drinking blood-sucking _bastard._

“I was thinking more of Hux,” she says as she looks only at the food. “What he said about your hoard. What _is_ it that you collect? Other people you’ve kidnapped?” He surely heard what V0-LC-8 said to her as well, although she’s not going to mention them. Hux can defend himself, the droid probably can’t.

He doesn’t answer in the time it takes for her to pick up and consider one of the little pale parcels, and decide it’s some sort of dough filled with paste. “If I hoard anything, it’s knowledge. Wisdom. Understanding. And,” he strides fast around the table so that he’s suddenly burning into her arm, “according to the most _esteemed_ General Hux, a certain girl recently liberated from Jakku.”

She moves away from him down the table, dipping the dough ball into the soup as an experiment. They’re probably not meant to go together, but the soup and dough and the tangy meat that bursts from inside the dough all taste so good! “So. What are you going to do with your latest find?”

“ _I_ am going to _teach_ you.” His fingers are burning on her elbow as he pulls her gently, inescapably back. “I will make you learn,” as he turns her and holds her firm once more so her face is nearly touching the fastening on his own tunic, only daring to look up as far as his throat in case she catches his eyes. “I told you we will make something glorious,” he’s saying as she grabs his elbows too, to warn him or push him away, she doesn’t know. _“Rey._ I shall make you all new, my revolution, not Light but Dark.”

Something in the words, the way he says and shapes them, it’s not that he doesn’t believe in them and think he can carry them out because this time he does, oh he _does_ , and she strains against his grip.

But.

She knows those words. They don’t mean day and night, or different types of colour, or even light and its absence, and she knows them the way she recognised Ren the moment he stamped down the gangplank and looked around searching for her, sniffing her out,

they **_sing_** to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is brought to you by the Deathless quotes:
> 
> 'And just as I was drifting off to sleep, broken and exhausted and still bleeding a little from a nip or two, Volchya-Yagoda said softly in my ear, "Sleep well, Marya Norevna. I think I like you best. None of the other girls gave me new shoes."
> 
> and
> 
> "I shall make you all now, my own revolution, neither red nor white, but black."


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, this chapter burned down, fell over and THEN sank into the swamp.
> 
> I'm so sorry for missing my deadline AGAIN, everyone. Work and travelling to and from work has just left me exhausted, plus this chapter was being an absolute bear, because a certain something that happens later in the completed version is VERY tricky to handle correctly. In the meantime, please accept this small offering, and consider this the first half, with the second half to follow relatively soon.
> 
> *drops mic, collapses*

If he’d sat her down and tried to feed her by hand again she’d have gone for his eyes. Instead he lets her go, stands back and sits and watches her pull flesh from the raptor (soft and yielding like synth loaf or veg meat, comes away in flakes from the bone, crispy on her lips and melts on her tongue) and she doesn’t think until she’s swallowed the first mouthful that she needs something to bargain with, and all she’s even going to consider using as a chip right now is finishing this meal.

She licks up the fat that ran between her fingers before saying “That being you showed me to, your Supreme Leader. It knew me.” She makes certain to keep her face aimed at her fingers, so she can sneak a look at him.

Either she’s too quick or he’s not surprised. His face doesn’t change at all. “He sent me to find you. Certainly he knew of you.”

Which is not the same as knowing her.

And that thing _knew_ her, and she can’t remember ever seeing it before, not even in nightmares like Ren or buried somewhere deep like the Light and the Dark, and it had looked at her, on her knees before it, reaching out to scoop her up, and if Ren’s touch burns then that corpse’s touch would mean utter oblivion.  

“What if Snoke hadn’t decided to give me to you?” she asks instead, keeping her hands away from picking at the hole she’s made in the raptor’s side, where she can see the bones.

Odd, how she didn’t notice he was smiling until it’s gone. “You would _not_ have been killed,” he repeats himself from last night. Though he sounds less certain of that now, when he’s had her bestowed upon him by his cherished leader, than he did when the mask was still on and they were drinking to her uncertain future. “Snoke would merely have overseen your training himself.”

Training. _Used, displayed, stored or traded_. Now he’s kept her locked up and shown her off to his master and received her back again like a portion for hard work well done, all that’s left is being used. But there’s also the option of being useful, so she asks him “What sort of training?”

He looks from her to the food and back, not even moving his head. No more answers until she eats more, and there’s her real answer: training that makes her do a thing without him even saying to do it, training that keeps her will locked in her jaw, training that is not about what she wants or does not want.  

She could get angry yet again, but really anger’s brought her nothing so far but being pulled about, slammed into walls, fingers sinking into her brain, being forced to the ground and gagged.

She’s so _tired_ of being angry.

She can be patient and she can wait and she can reach out to pull another strip of flesh off the raptor, pop it into her mouth and barely chew. “What sort of training?”

He reaches and quicker than she can dive away her chair’s moving so she clings to it without thinking, and her knees don’t bang into his but stop so her trousers barely brush his tunic and she’d have flown face first into his chest if she hadn’t kept a death grip on the chair. “Training so that you will be capable of _this._ ”

She doesn’t even look at what she grasps to shove in her mouth, she knocks at least one plate to the ground and gets her sleeve wet with sauce. Whatever it is crunches once, twice between her teeth and turns to mush and water to let her speak.

“I could do _that?”_

“You will do more.” His hand’s near her free still fairly clean one, only for a moment before he pulls back but for that moment it’s like he’s in her head again because she knows how much he wants oh he _wants_. “I will teach you,” and he’s smiling to see her smile, and she hopes he keeps his hands to himself so he can’t see more than her joy because

 _move things without touching them,_ does he even _realise_ what he’s given her and what she’s going to do when she gets half a chance-

She fumbles for where she vaguely remembers the dough parcels were, hope growing and hurting her. She can barely swallow the parce she grabs. “What else?”

 “I will show you the ways of the Force.” He says that last word like it’s a tool he uses for improving engines or mending something, nothing more, and again he’s not so certain of what he’s saying because she knows he wants to _sing_ that word, like he sang to her of the Light and the Dark. The Force is something to be breathed in and sighed out, even on Jakku those who don’t believe in the Force don’t dare mock it because you wouldn’t mock a sandstorm or a rain deluge, you wouldn’t want a sun or star to be angry at you.

Rey’s never believed in the Force, just like she’s never believed in Luke Skywalker, she might not believe now, but with the way Ren says it and wants to say it she could manage to. “The Force,” she says, testing and tasting it.

“I should have found you sooner,” Ren’s saying. “Snoke should have sent me before now! But there’s time enough for you to learn.”

Two ways this can go; she can ask just _how_ long Ren and his corpse master have known about her, to which he probably won’t answer, or she can leave that for now and ask more about the training, which he’s all but panting to talk about anyway. Hardly a choice, but it’s there. She also chooses to say “What else will I learn?” rather than what else will you teach me? Not that Ren seems to notice.

“To fight.”

“I _can_ fight.” Did he not see her knock Plutt down? He’s certainly seen her running, her punches and kicks.

He doesn’t shrug, she doesn’t think Ren would ever do something like that. He does turn his hand over, palm up to the ceiling. “Then I will teach you to kill,” he says, with absolute certain belief.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I believe Kylo Ren's gone too long without making a spectacle of his tortured self, and traumatising someone into the bargain.
> 
> Let's remedy that.
> 
> (Also more mind probes, folks. It's gonna get trippy.)

Right.

Okay.

So.

She needs.

She’s _got_ to be clever.

She doesn’t put anything else into her mouth, she doesn’t need his permission to say “I won’t learn that.”

He isn’t taking her seriously. Probably _he_ thinks she doesn’t believe in what she just said, or he doesn’t hear her over the plans he’s making in his brain. He’s looking away from her for what seems like the first time, just a moment, eyes closing in, in what? Anticipation? Frustration? “There is so much you must learn.”

“I’m not going to learn how to kill people.” There’s sweat from between her fingers mixing with the grease from the parcel of meat.

He looks back at her now, lips tighter, space between his brows tighter. “That was a poor choice of words. There’s far more that-”

“I’m _not_ going to kill people. Not for you, or Hux,” and he sits up all jealous, “or that corpse you call a leader or _anyone.”_

He breathes in hard and she fights the urge to stand. He’s like the wreck of _Exaltation_ all over again, looming over and ready to crush her under his mass. She will sit here, and she will just lean over now to pull the nearest leg off the raptor (less graceful than she’d hoped, she nearly pulls the whole _thing_ off the plate before she gets the kriffing leg free) and she will look him in the eye as she sinks her teeth in.

He sits back again as she worries at the leg, saying “You’re used to violence.”

She doesn’t bother to swallow before replying. “Wouldn’t have lasted long if I wasn’t.”

“Then why such reluctance?” He stands up and steps past her, he can’t bear to sit still. She doesn’t like not being able to see where he is, twisting about to keep him in her line of sight. “Fourteen years and you never added to that grave-pit?”

“No.” She rips off another piece of meat. Swallowing is hard work now.

“Really.” Ren’s moving around the table, never looking away. “Then how did you survive?”

None of his business, but he seems to know it all anyway, so: “Plutt protected me for a few years, then I struck out on my own.” She carries on picking at the leg, sick feeling back in her stomach and making it near impossible to taste the meat she’s managing to get down.

“Not what I meant. How did you survive?”

She makes sure to lock eyes again, then looks hard at the table and back to him: trade. He won’t take it, but it’ll give her an excuse not to speak any longer and a chance to think. She’ll talk to V0-LC-8, they already like her, and they’ll find a way off the base for her once she’s been given the security clearances-

“How many times did you fight?” He’s standing by his chair again now, his hand resting on the back of it – no. Gripping it.

 _Really_ none of his business. (And the answer’s too many.) There’s not much left on the leg, so she tosses it back and chooses a green leaf. She never really knew about this either; green things that haven’t been mulched into something vaguely palatable, things you can eat near straight off the plant, still full of water and bitter too-

“How did you stop Jakku from eating you alive?”

She needs something to wash the taste out. She picks up one of the cups just as his hand comes _down_ next to hers, and the cup’s so slick what’s probably water slips out of her fingers and ends up all over his.

“Your anger saved you.” He lifts his hand again, not even shaking the liquid off, just watching the droplets fall. “I can teach you to use that. I can teach you to channel it-”

Now this was _never_ his business. But she doesn’t like where he seems to be going with his little speech, so she says “It wasn’t _anger.”_

Ren stops. Stares as she tries to find something else to say, to explain it. She can only come up with “It wasn’t hope, it was, it was _patience._ Acceptance.”

“You can’t be serious.” He’s standing as still as he’s forced her to be before. She stamps down wanting to giggle at the way his brow’s wrinkled and his mouth’s open, because there’s danger here and now, she needs to be _so_ clever. She will not get angry and prove him right, she will sit right here and stare him down without even needing to stand up.

“Anger’s never really helped me. It doesn’t do well on Jakku, it takes up too much space and energy-” which is sort of true – “-and if that’s what you’ll teach me, nothing but anger, I don’t want it.” Oh, _very_ clever of her.

Ren –

\- looks almost like she’s hurt him. Not physically. More like she’s denied him portions or pulled out of a bargain he was counting on. His fingers are so tight his knuckles are beyond dead white, so she gets herself ready to leap up and put the table between them. “You have no idea. _No_ idea of what I am offering you.”

“What? The chance to kill people in creative ways-”

 _“Power.”_ She nearly falls backwards when he drops in front of her and his face comes much too close. “Tell me that you haven’t longed to take control of your existence, ever since you were left behind. Tell me you haven’t wanted to hurt those who’ve hurt you.”

She looks past his shoulder at the fruit on the table. She could lean past him to snag one and eat it to shut him out.

“You haven’t felt anger since I found you? Not even once?”

She looks at his forehead, his hairline, not his eyes. “Yes. I have. It didn’t help.”

Ren says “I think you’re lying,” and then “let me see.”

And she thinks blood-drinking blood-sucking bastard

Where did his hand come from?

_and she’s thinking blood-drinking blood-sucking bastard_

His fingers are wet on her cheek. “Show me, show me-”

“Get off me,” she grabs for his hair, “Don’t you _dare_ , I’m”

_back on her hands and knees thinking **Oh, to be free and kick Ren’s legs out from under him**_

_kicking him and she gets him right in the back of the calf and she could howl, could_ **scream** _with the satisfaction when it nearly takes the leg out from under him_

_are the Stormtroopers who hurt being disposed of through holes in the walls, like her clothes and her hair and_ **“Good,”** _she’s saying_

“You were glad they had been dealt with. You liked that that they had been punished,” Ren says.

“No!”

 _she’s staring at Ren with his wine and his arrogance and screaming inside_ I wasn’t screaming yes you were **_What do you know about bitterness?_**

“ _Oh,_ oh you,” she tries to get out but he’s got her boxed in, pressed against the chair

_and she’s punching and kicking and imagining how she’d hurt Plutt and Teedo and Pluut’s henchman and the Stormtroopers, she should have fought_

_and she’s imagining it would be so easy_ _if only she could get into Ren’s room_

“What?”

Her thoughts stop hard, like he’s put on the brakes. His lips are close and his breath’s hot on her mouth and chin, she could bite him

_quietly, and had something other than her nails to stick into his throat_

“Ah.” He pulls back again

_and between breath and breath she wants to stick her nails in his **eyes** for yanking out her loneliness to examine like some junk trader_

“That’s mine that’s mine” she has to pant, she can’t breathe, she kicks out and Ren hisses with pain but shifts to trap her foot between his legs but she _hurt_ him, good

_and she’s digging her nails into his wrist to keep him out, does he feel that, does it hurt,_ **good**

_and she’s figured out his trick with his hand and she’s planning, wait for him to get close, take out his hands somehow with the blanket if she twisted it up, kick his legs out from under him and then_

_does she have the guts to kick him until he stops moving, breathing_

“I believe you do, I truly do,” his fingers are burning her jaw now the water’s dried, it would be better if it hurt but he’s so _careful_

_and the voice says “Wash yourself or I’ll come in there and do it for you” and between another breath and breath she wants to find whoever that voice belongs to and kill them_

_kill them_

“Show me.”

“I _won’t.”_

“Show me,” he says as she tries to think only of patience, acceptance, they’ll come back for her she only has to wait, bar the door shut up your face don’t let them see you weep don’t let him see me break

 _and she’s clinging to the side of another destroyer she never learned the name of, no safety line set up yet, she’s too high up, cheek presses against the metal (it burns right through her face scarf) with fingers slow, slipping, wind ripping and pulling her off and she’s_ too high up _and she’s going to fall when she just can’t cling any longer_

_she’s so tired_

she’s so tired.

“I can teach you to overcome this.” If he wanted he could crush her hand between his hands, but he doesn’t touch her now. His fingertips barely touch her temples. “I can show you how to use it. Your anger, your frustration. Your passion.” He sighs with the last word. She could fall forward into his arms from that sound.

She squeezes her eyes shut so tight it hurts, galaxies spin while the fingers in her brain twitch to call up something else. She breathes deep to reach down

_and there’s just this barrier to break through, one more until the next one, just one more obstacle to overcome is all, she’s adjusting her footing and getting ready to push herself up to the next handhold she spotted, she knows her body (her mind) and what it can do, the ledge is not too small but a perfect place to stop and catch her breath and wait for the wind to hush, one more barrier that’s all she has to do, one more_

_and she steadies herself and reaches_

**_up_ **

“You _are_ angry,” Ren says, so triumphant, so pleased.

One more obstacle, to tear that triumph down and

**_up_ **

_she grabs the hold and stills herself and tenses her legs and pushes_

**_up_ **

she hisses, she could bite she could _spit_ but it’s not anger, it’s not wanting to die here before they come back for her

**_up_ **

_she thinks of his fingers and sees a figure just above her, reaching down towards her, keeping her back, forcing her down_

**_up_ **

she shoves past his hands and stands

**_up_ **

_she grabs his hand and yanks and she’s up and she’s in_

oh

_and his head is in his hands before he looks up at the melted black thing (it might have been a skull or a face or a breathing mask once before the fire) and says “so much depends on this, if I cannot do it, please help me, show me the way”_

_and he’s holding fire in his hand, lifting it up, bringing it down, screaming screaming but he’s not screaming it’s someone else struggling on the ground,_ he’s _the one saying so quiet his helmet won’t catch it “help me fight this help me do this_ help me _”_

_and he’s on his knees before Snoke so many times and every time he thinks_ **for you for you only for you**

Ren’s breathing is harsh, like the mask is back on, he’s grasping but he can’t touch her.

“You’re afraid.” The _look_ on his face when she says that! Every word is agony, but oh, _oh,_ “You’re afraid. That you’ll never be. As strong. As Darth Vader.”

He screams.

 _She_ doesn’t fly back the table moves rips right off its legs smashes into the wall loud **_loud_** he thrusts towards her and _this_ must be how it ends but the metal whips past missing her and **_loud_** again as it hits that wall too.

He screams at her, all wide mouth and teeth and hair all over the place, raising his hands to crush her head.

He screams as he runs away from her.

He screams after the door shuts and she lets go of herself and falls.

He screams through the wall. She doesn’t even have to put her ear to it, she can hear it from the floor, through the floor and up through her arms. 

He’s breaking things in there, crashes cracks metal shrieking, and he screams and screams and screams.

 

There’s not much to do except sit up, curl into herself to stop the shaking, wait for him to stop.

 

He doesn’t stop.

 

Why doesn’t he stop?

 

Why won’t he stop?

_Please_ let him stop.

 

Make him stop, I’ll do anything, just make him stop.

 

This is what Kylo Ren is. Beneath the robes and gloves and mask, the rivalry with Hux and pretend courtesies and attempts to spoil and impress her. He’s insane. Mad. He went mad a long time ago and he’s a raging falling wreck. She’s stuck in a room with a mad man clawing and screaming on the other side of the wall.

 

She goes away inside to her island. Ren’s making so much noise he surely can’t listen in.

 

When she comes back the light above is dimmer, it’s quiet on the other side of the wall, V0-LC-8 is tugging at her tunic. [If you will follow me, Master Rey, I will take you to your room. We need to clear up after Lord Kylo Ren.]

She’s clumsy getting up, trying not to lean on the droid. She scrapes together what’s left of the meal arranged all for her on a plate and follows V0-LC-8 into another room, with a bed and a fresher and everything she doesn’t care about right now.

V0-LC-8 turns from signalling through the door to the other droids that they can start, just before it shuts. [Lord Kylo Ren does not often cause this level of damage. And his periods of heightened temper do not last for long.]

Rey stuffs the other leg of the raptor in her mouth so she doesn’t have to reply.

V0-LC-8 speeds about the room, checking that everything’s in order. Just when they’re at the door she swallows and decides and asks “Do you have to go?”

The droid swivels and says nothing for a short moment of her time. Who knows how long it takes for them? [I will stay with you tonight, Master Rey. Lord Kylo Ren will come fetch you in the morning.]

“Great.”

But she sits on the floor with V0-LC-8 and finishes her meal and talks about things she forgets as soon as they’re done. When she nearly topples over because she’s so tired they nip and worry with little tools and pincers until she takes off her food stained clothes and burrows in under the covers of the bed.

* * *

 

One other thing happens that awful ‘night’, after V0-LC-8 powers down and she lies and waits for sleep to come and it doesn’t and doesn't.

Or she only thinks it doesn’t, because for a heartbeat she sees coming out of the dark a dead white face, dark curls, eyes that seem to hate her, and all this when there’s no proper light to see anything by. Her heart slams again, she sits up and it’s gone.

She settles back down with her fists ready, curled tight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, it was only a matter of time until Kylo Ren **royally** screwed up. I congratulate him on making it this far without breaking something. (Unless you count nearly fracturing Rey's ribs.)
> 
> Writing dialogue for V0-LC-8 is far easier than doing it for these two goobs.
> 
> This chapter is brought to you by the Deathless quotes:  
> 'Because, Nasha, even when you have been wicked, sometimes there is a warm bed and a warm friend somewhere, if only you know where to look. I learned that from Volchya, though I don't think it's precisely what I was meant to learn.'
> 
> and
> 
> 'Marya Morevna slept with her fists curled tight, held at the ready, next to her chin.'


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to thank everyone who's left kudos or discussed what they like about this story in reviews (and apologise to those who I haven't yet had time to answer, I'm so sorry, I plead a hectic working week!). Here's to being able to continue relatively regular updates for you all :)

Ren’s been in her room while she was asleep, because with the latest meal and new set of knits – slightly different from the standard set, an under tunic more like the top layers of her old clothes and a larger padded tunic she has to leave open a little – there’s also a device that speaks when V0-LC-8 shows her what button to press, and how to translate the recording into one of the languages she understands. Then they do it for her anyway when she refuses to touch the thing.

It says this:

_Where is the realm of the Light and the Dark? When existence was still wet from birth and blinking in confusion, the siblings seized it and pulled and worried and divided it up among themselves, and then when Light and Dark grew up into the largest of the litter  they reapportioned everything, leaving Grey and Shadow and others like them to watch and wonder from the side, and sometimes stray too near and get sucked into the argument and mess and duel and dance._

_For a time they were content to swim side by side, raring and scratching only slightly. But Light and Dark are siblings, and their ambition is precisely equal, and when sentient beings they could call to and cherish and destroy came on the scene the truce ended very quickly._

_Their rivalry soon encompassed the galaxy and the struggle of it consumed more than one world. If a Republic was formed to champion order and justice then chaos and dissolution hacked and decayed its foundations until it fell, with or without applause. If the Dark’s children staked a foothold and aimed for a legacy, the Light’s children came blazing and burning to cleanse and purge. There could be no agreement between them, from the millions of children that spent their lives in their struggles to a sister and brother locked in a garden while she knelt in contemplation and he roared and shrieked to be let out._

_Sometimes Light is on top, sometimes Dark. Light more often once upon a time._

_The rapt pupil will be forgiven for assuming Dark to be wicked and Light to be virtuous. Let the truth be told: Light is self-righteous and severe and sterile. In service to itself, it will commit many offenses, if not all. So, too, is Dark possessed of infinite strategies – but also passion and conviction, strength and power. Each, in their own way, can have mercy towards their children. But of an end to their argument and mess and duel and dance, we shall have none, not ever, until the end of all._

_So where are the realms of Light, of Dark?_

_You might go to Malachor with its frozen remnants, where Dark refused to bow go quietly into the Light and destroyed itself but took its sibling with it. You might spend your life and many more searching for the first temple of the Light’s most favoured and tested children, upon which was built an order that thrived and withered and rallied and died a weak death again and again. They are not so easy to find. But you need no more than breathe and you draw their realms into your being. Every portion of existence is divided between them, savage and snarling and leaving little room for their weary, frustrated little siblings. Even the atoms strangle each other in their sleep._

_To reach the country of Light you must approach it straight on and sedate, surrendering yourself utterly. To reach the country of Dark, approach it in earnest and topple over into the power you seek, though the toll is much the same as for Light._

_In return for their love, all the siblings require is merely everything that you are._

 Rey can’t help it. She wants and waits for more. When more doesn’t come, she turns back to the latest broken padd V0-LC-8 brought her, probing its insides again.

“That was cheerful,” she says to fill the silence.

[Not a word _I_ would associate with the content of that particular recording.] V0-LC-8 almost sounds sorry they opened the thing to start with.

“Was there even a point to all that?” she asks the air, picking at a stubborn piece of wire.

And V0-LC-8 replies [It is used as a part of a lesson. To instruct and teach.]

She barely pauses in teasing the wire she doesn’t even see right now. The words that they used imply a pattern, a routine rather than something one-off. How did the routine get started? Who else has listened to this? Why is she only asking _now?_

 _Now_ she drops the tools. “V0-L, a while back, you said none of the others asked your name. Can you tell me about those others?”

[I am sorry, Master Rey. I am not authorized to do so.]

Right. She should have expected that. Although, they had been able to at least mention it the other ‘night’ – **_shit._** “Did Ren get at you while you were out of the room those few times? Wipe your memory?”

[Wait, please.] V0-LC-8 considers. [Yes, Lord Kylo Ren reprogrammed me.] They take a moment to perform a self-diagnostic. [However, the information you require is still present in my system. I simply cannot state it to you.]

She’s picking up the padd when they add [ ** _Or_** transmit it to any device that you might be able to access.]

“Damn.” Oh, but he’s smart as well as mad. “Could you tell me about Vader, then?”

[I am sorry, Master Rey, but I am not authorized to tell you that either.] They add [I am very sorry.]

“Don’t. It’s my fault.” She should have been asking these questions the moment he sealed himself away from her and screamed and screamed, not two ‘days’ later. _Much_ too much time for him to cut off all her sources of information, to get into V0-LC-8 and reprogram them into yet another, another what?

Another lesson or method of training or message: You will eat from my hand, you will learn from me and from nothing and no one else. You will learn what I wish you to learn. I will take your mind and break it and shape it into something new.

So what did he want her to learn from what she just had to sit through?

* * *

 

Ren comes through his door just as she’s putting the case back on the padd. He's left his cloak off but the helmet and gloves are back on. They probably won’t ever be coming off again. Good.

She sets the tools down, carefully. V0-LC-8 is humming with artificial nerves somewhere near the wall. She presses her fingers into the table top so they won’t shake, and her wrists against the cool metal to try and stop the sweat starting on her back. The raptor face makes it easy, easier, to look at where his eyes must be.

Remember, she made him scream. Hux makes him hiss or growl in anger and Vader, whoever or whatever they are, makes him plead. She made him scream.

She lifts her head and thinks for a bizarre second, once, of a queen from Naboo, deigning to show him attention.

“Come with me.” If his voice is still hoarse or cracking from all that screaming, the helmet’s vocal processor doesn’t let it show.

* * *

 

Ren keeps her tight at his side, a good little student walking right beside her master, so close that no one will be able to spot the way his fingers are crooked to hold keep her in place with _something_ that has a name now. The Force. She pulls a little at the invisible grip in the more crowded corridors, just for the sake of it, but he only squeezes tighter, and she has to stop to keep the blood flowing through her arm at all.

Once he’s safely locked her in a room as large as a hangar bay, only with all four walls intact and near empty, she can walk away from him without a tug back on her leash. Oh, she could _run_ in here, it’s cold but she’d warm up fast with laps and leaps. She’d be able to pretend far better that she’s back on Jakku here than in her own room.

Although she does have to cross her arms and pull the new tunic in tight to herself to keep out this new chill. One good thing about staying in that other room, at least it was warmer than the rest of this place. “What’s this about?”

“You make efforts to keep yourself fit and in excellent physical condition.” Ren walks towards the nearest wall and some bundles on the floor. “You claim that you know how to fight.”

Then the staff’s in his hand, like he willed it into being or pulled it out of the air. Only that’s way too terrifying, so she decides he must have summoned it to him with the Force, moving his arm too quick for her to see.

That’s still terrifying. How fast can he really move when he wants to, how much has he been slowing himself down for her? Probably he’s speeding up again now he no longer wants to put her at her ease or try to make her like him. He doesn’t need to pretend he’s human and sane.

“Show me,” he’s saying. He throws the staff to her, rather than at her.

She grabs it out of the air. The weight and heft and _mine_ drive out everything. They saved her staff. Not saved, confiscated it, but anyway they brought it with them, she has it back and.

And.

She takes the time to examine it, making quite sure it hasn’t been tampered with or booby-trapped in any way that they could possibly do in such a relatively small amount of space to work with, before she looks back up at him at last. “Why do I get to have this back?”

“You don’t. You will retain it merely for the duration of this session.”

Yeah, right. Now she’s sure it’s not going to blow up in her face she hugs it close, practically folds in around it; this time he’ll have to pry it from her grip, likely what he’s counting on. This explains the much larger tunic and under tunic left for her today, at least. “You want us to fight?”

“If it does not offend your _delicate_ sensibilities.” If it keeps her from knowing the state of his voice, at least the mask lets his sarcasm show. Somehow. “I need to gauge your hand-to-hand skills.”

“Haven’t you already seen all that? In my head?”

“I have. I just really wanted to see you perform in the present.” Now he sounds just a little bit amused. Probably enjoying the prospect of hurting her.

“How are you going-”

 _Snap_ and he’s holding a pole shorter than her staff but still pretty long, and it looks solid enough that if he hits her with it, it’s going to hurt like shit. He twists it about, moving and near _flowing_ like that thug with the whip a few years back. She thinks he’s going to drop it before he holds it tight again and stands slightly crouched raptor-like, ready to charge, familiar yet again except that the saber

the pole?

the pole is wrong. It doesn’t quite fit the picture, of menace and something else from - before. He pushes his hand towards her

**_no_ **

She’s somehow still on her feet, staff raised like she can stop him. Before he can clench his fist or even curl a finger she says, she does _not_ shout, “No Force powers, I’ll fight, just, don’t use the Force.”

“I thought you were so confident in your abilities?”

“Yes, but you can throw me into a wall without even touching me. I thought you wanted to see how well I can do hand-to-hand?”

“Very well.” He doesn’t lower his hand much. Maybe he wasn’t going to use the Force, maybe now he’ll break his word to spite her. She can still breathe easy again. She’s going to need that breath in a second.

“Show me,” he says once more.

There’s time to think he’s big, she’s fought bigger but not by much, and those were all heavy and couldn’t move as fast as her, he’s fast even without the Force and strong, and he insane too, this is going to hurt, she tries not to care about that.

He comes at her slow, though, like a sandstorm, so she prepares like she would for a sandstorm. Calm the breathing, shift stance, lower the head to protect the eyes, brace and wait for the howling and the pain.

The first blow’s so hard the staff should leap away from her in pieces. She manages to hold on somehow and swipes at his knee

that isn’t there any more

he catches her high on her right arm.

_Fuck._

She thought the inoculation pain had died down by now but no it’s back, it really does feel like something’s exploded inside her flesh but there’s no breath to scream as she swings at his head.

Pain splits her knee, she follows through with her left side and hits his knee in return, he grunts in pain and she wants more, dodges him and gets in another blow at his torso, he blocks and she sneaks in the shot at his wrist to make him drop the pole

and he _doesn’t let go_ , he hisses but he holds on and he’s aiming for her chest again, she blocks and this blow shakes her down to her bones, she pushes back and back and back and gives a shove to force him away and get some space between them.

There’s only time for a breath or two before he strikes again, so she unclasps the stuffy outer tunic to stall him, pulls it off, kicks it towards him. It catches on his foot and he kicks it again to his side without looking down. She slides out of the shoes while she’s at it and ignores how her feet immediately seize up against the floor. She waits for him to come back.

She’s used to more sound in a fight. He doesn’t taunt her any longer. She’d prefer it if he called her names and insults and slurs, or did anything to show that she’s rattling him, he wasn’t expecting her to be so good, his fury is getting him to make mistakes. He doesn’t do anything but breath harder the few times she scores a hit.

It’s back to being like a storm, the best you can do is batten down and wait it out. So she takes the blows and keeps him at bay and manages to deal out her own strikes, making the storm retreat for a few heartbeats before they close again.

She drops to one knee so she can dodge a blow and try to sweep the legs out from under him, and of course it’s not just that he wants her anger and pain and frustration. He’s learning her and every move she can make, and she’s only got a few of them because they’re all she’s ever needed to get by and make others leave her alone. He’s seen everything she has.

So why is he letting this go on for so long?

Because he has no choice, really. Because this is not the first time this fight has happened, or the last. Because this is both duel and dance, one of the oldest to exist save that it has no beginning. And no end.

She comes back from wherever that came from to herself as he stops right before bringing another blow down. He steps back. If he’s breathing heavier now, the mask hides that too.

She’s left tensed and panting, cheated and stupid for feeling so before she falls into her body, the way her pulse strains in her temples and her heart squeezes and her lungs struggle and it’s all too much.

“What do you feel, Rey?” Ren asks.

She tries to fight his touch inside her head. Which doesn’t come, so he is keeping his word, even after the fight is over. So: “Tired. Pain. Cold.”

“What else?”

“ _Not_ angry.” She walks over to get the tunic. The heat’s being sucked out of her skin with every breath.

“What about joy?”

The tunic’s already picked up the chill of the floor, the numbing pain’s beginning to seep up her legs from her cold cold feet. This is going to be unpleasant. “You said. You _said_ you wouldn’t use the Force.”

“There was no need for me to do so.”

She has to balance putting on the tunic with keeping hold of her staff in case he tries to whip it away from her, and the clasps of the tunic are cold, cold! against her breast bone and stomach. Her sweat sticks to the cloth and draws out even more warmth from her back, so how is it there’s still so much heat pulsing in her arms and chest?

“I liked being able to use what I’ve learned properly again. I like the space in here. I liked having a challenge.”

“Have the past few days not been challenging enough, then?” He gestures for something dark to slide over from the wall. At first she thinks it’s his cloak but no, it’s a large black bag.

She folds the staff in her arms so her can’t just jerk it away, preparing to be dragged across the floor, like the times he’s forced her over various thresholds. “I liked having the chance to fight back.”

He doesn’t pull her to him. This time, he comes to her. “Then you will have many more chances,” and he puts his hand on hers, and she lets him _have_ the staff if only she can get away from his fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is brought to you by the fact that, according to J.J. Abrams, Kylo Ren really is setting down his helmet on top of the ashes of his enemies.
> 
> It explains a lot, actually.
> 
> This chapter is also brought to you by the finale to Star Wars Rebels season 2: Twilight of the Apprentice. Malachor, people. A most harrowing place. 
> 
> Finally, this chapter is brought to you by the opening section of Chapter 7 of Deathless, which I adapted into the short lesson in italics that the recording device gives Rey, and which I will not quote in full because it's quite long and I have no desire for this to turn into footnotes similar to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I will, however, quote this particular snippet:
> 
> 'The rapt pupil will be forgiven for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be virtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature- but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind.'


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, once again for all the lovely reviews and kudos! 
> 
> Buckle in, people. The times they are a changing.

More darkness and metal walls – _again_ \- once they leave the chamber that might now be their training hall. All this metal and artificial light is going to drain her dry. What will she have to do to get to – to be _allowed_ to see the sun, _any_ sun, she never thought she’d miss the sun.

He could at least lead her past a hangar bay. Right now she wouldn’t even care if he just did it to torment her, buzzing in her ear how she’s never going to get out of this place, if only she could get a bit of a _view._ She could go back to her room distracting herself by thinking of trees and hills, the cold that lies over them and the cloud of her own breath, this world stretched out below her like a bounty, and this world’s sun above. Something to lose herself in for the next time she needs to escape. She could keep her island safe, away from Ren, if she could _see_ out there once or twice more.

People watching is what she has instead. Most of the people they pass - moving to give Ren plenty of space or standing quickly aside - leave their faces bare, so she had some variety at least. No Stormtroopers up here. Is that their form of hierarchy? The higher up the ladder of authority you are, the more you’re allowed to show? Not just your face but your actual self?

These people are like Ren with his mask off, like Hux when he isn’t sneering. They look dead no matter what colour they are. Their skin just looks so – untried. Untested. They’d never last a minute under the Jakku sun or wind. In the glimpse she gets of each person she can’t see any face that’s either alive or lived in. They’re all so soft and dead.

And they’re all human. Has there even been _one_ face from another species since she stepped out of the crowd back in Niima? She wants so much to see an Uthuthma face. Or Abednedo. Old Bobbajo lumbering along with his wares. The yellow slit pupil eyes of a Kyuzo above their face scarf, or the blank green chitin plates of Melitto. She’d even welcome the sight of Plutt roaring his head off and running fingers over his stupid ornaments right now.

 _Anything_ other than a mass of human faces with no laughter lines, wind burn, even a touch of the sun. What kind of place has she ended up in when she and everyone around her never sees the (this world’s **_any world’s)_** sun?

She doesn’t want to see humans any longer. She looks at their uniforms – grey, grey, grey, grey, grey – and all the different body types one species can have. She sneaks peeks at their hats and hair. Those presenting as male keep it trimmed close to the head, those presenting as female sometimes wear it short and sometimes longer, longer than the hair she’s been left with.

When she’s had her fill without moving her head, she deliberately looks around at the latest one who darted out of Ren’s way. (Her way as well, now.) He clutches his padd close to his chest, there’s actually an expression there. Fear. Of what? Ren’s general stamping around the place like a raptor looking for the next meal? His lofty position of authority in this whole setup? Remembering something he did in the past?

V0-LC-8 said _periods_ of heightened temper-

A brush and then a tug, so it looks completely natural when Ren pulls at her chin so she faces front again. She feels him just a little closer at her back. “You are my apprentice,” he says, in that quiet way the mask somehow manages. “You do not look for the reaction or approval of others.”

Lying, she does not say. Oh, how you’re lying right now. **_For you for you only for you,_** remember what you always say to the melted helmet and whoever or whatever once wore it? Does he always lie to himself as much as to her?

Or does he not remember, that she remembers? Did he choose to forget? Hiding that moment beyond a desert or locking it in a room in his mind, just like he shuts her in and pulls her out again when it suits him? Convenient.

There’s an opening for her to fire back, but probably safer to ask about what she was thinking earlier: “Does the First Order only recruit humans?”

“That is not your concern.”

“Then you don’t.” They stride past two females. Human, again. She doesn’t look closely at them but they’re looking after her, not even restarting the conversation that Ren’s approach halted.

At last she gets it: he’s showing her off, displaying his prized salvage again. A message and lesson for those around them, this time. Whatever noise you might or might not have heard or heard about, coming from a certain set of rooms two ‘days’ ago, Lord Kylo Ren’s apprentice is alive, she’s visibly unharmed, She’s walking obediently by her master’s side. They are most content together. Coming back from their very first training session. And making no more attempts to escape.

Maybe she should ask about Vader after all. See if she can cause her master Lord Kylo Ren to have one of his periods of heightened temper right in the middle of a busy corridor, the busiest she can find while there’s still time.

She considers it, savours it, lets it go.

Knowing at least one thing he’s afraid of still doesn’t help to take him down, not if she doesn’t know _why_. If she has to ask or let him know how little she knows, then she’s lost. She’ll wait until she can get V0-LC-8’s memories loose or get access to a database somewhere in this place and figure out how to hack it.

* * *

 

When she comes out from the sleeping room with hair still damp from the fresher, instead of the latest meal there’s Ren standing by the table.

She thought he’d go back to his side of the wall. Or did he go and come back in the time she took? How long has he been waiting for her?

She stays by the door. If she has to move fast she’ll get back inside before he can get a hold, and he’ll probably not want the embarrassment of tearing the door down or wrenching it open. Probably. She can always retreat to the fresher.

“The First Order is willing to accept the service of any species who swears fealty to it,” Ren says, finally replying to her last words. Did it take him this long to come up with a suitable reply? No, probably he didn’t want to ruin his triumphant image by carrying on a conversation where others could see.

“So where _are_ they?” As she ties her hair back, tight enough that this time it won’t escape, she adds “I haven’t seen any other species than humans here, _or_ up on the ship. Do they only get to be Stormtroopers?”

“Their skills are put to the most appropriate use.” Which, what with the way he says it, could mean they don’t even get to be Stormtroopers. Something even lower, then?

Most of the traders, and a lot of the scavengers, had horror stories about what happened to unlucky planets under Empire rule when they pissed off their overlord. The non-human species got the worst of it by far. The Old Empire hated non-humans. It polished its words and actions up to dazzle and soothe minds all over the galaxy, but enough people on enough levels knew the truth to still spit it at the Empire’s defenders thirty years later.

The Old Empire **_hated_** non-humans.

There was one world called Geonosis that was utterly purged of _every_ form of life, animals and sentients alike, for apparently no reason at all. Wookies were enslaved en-mass and used as cheap labour on dangerous building projects. Togruta and Twi’leks were sent to the Empire’s paddy fields or mines. One particular trader, trying to scare her, said the prettier ones were sent to serve in Imperial brothels until they died.

The most appropriate use.

“Right.” She puts a hand behind her to keep the switch for the door in reach.

“Do you have any further questions on this matter?” Ren doesn’t sound bored, at least, or like he’s defending the First Order.

It’s like testing a strained or torn muscle, or probing the tear in her mouth from a few days ago, she can’t resist going further even if it will be unpleasant. “Do you-”

He tilts his head.

“-fine, _they -_ use other species for labour?”

“If they volunteer their service in that area, the First Order provides employment.”

 _If_ they volunteer. How much choice do they have? Probably as much as she did when Ren was bellowing for her and Plutt was getting ready to shove her forward for a reward. Not much.

“You’d do better to direct your questions to Phasma.” Ren suddenly moves to the speaking device on the table; taps it to make it talk - _Where is the realm of the Light and -_ and turns it off again just as quick. “You’ve listened to this?” he asks, and when she nods, “What have you learned from it?”

Apparently Light and Dark are squabbling siblings, never grateful that they have an actual family and space enough between them all to share happily. They seem to like setting their children or servants or whatever against each other, purging undermining backstabbing with every chance they get.  They demand a heavy price, although for _what_ is never really explained. It’s a pretty enough fable, but still: “It was very vague. The Jedi are meant to be the servants of the Light, though?”

He exhales hard, drops his head for a second. What kind of face is he making under the mask? “You know of Jedi. What do you know about the Force?”

“They talk about it on Jakku. It’s some sort of invisible power. It’s supposed to make everything in the universe happen, good and bad. I never really believed in it.” And, since he’s actually mentioning Jedi first _without_ making the table rattle or reaching out to take her thoughts, “Some people said the Jedi got their powers from it. Others too, I suppose.”

“Accurate, if primitive.” Ren reaches out to make the device float off the table and up to his hand but not into it, just hovering there. “The Force is an energy field, created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.”

She loses track of the door sensor with her arm trapped between her back and the wall, _she’s heard those words before_ and she’s grateful Ren’s looking at the device spinning around above his fingers, not at her.

She’s heard this before. Not from him. They’re not his words, he’s just repeating them, trying to remember them and get them straight. Where did he get them from, who gave them to _her?_

Ren looks up. “The Force _binds_ us,” he says, sour inside that mask now, mocking. He spreads his fingers so the device can pass through the gaps between them, like a bird or speeder weaving lazily through Graveyard wrecks. (How much control must that take? How can he be so insane and still have such control?) “There is no emotion, there is peace; there is no ignorance, there is knowledge; there is no passion, there is serenity; there is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force.”

It’s that last line that really gets her. Death is death. She’s seen enough people fall from wrecks with no safety lines, get trapped and left behind, a wound went bad and they wouldn’t see Dr Roa or he couldn’t do anything for them, that TIE pilot and all the other bodies she’s seen pulled out of ships and tossed aside. Maybe on other planets it’s different, but on Jakku, even with that mystic Force people mentioned, death is death and that’s all. “What does that mean? There is no death?”

“ _Nothing._ Less than nothing.” He curls his fingers. The device creaks so much he might have broken it.

Careful now, careful. Something happened to make him remember those words and hate them so much.  “Then why tell me?”

“Because this lesson was false in one aspect. Only the Light demands the sacrifice of everything we are. The Dark makes no such demands.” He holds the device still above his hand now, so he can pluck it out of the air with flesh and blood fingers. “And the Light does not love us.”

“What you said, just now. Is that what the Jedi believe?” Right away she finds the door release again when he turns to her and _hisses._

“Jedi, _Jedi!”_ He sits down all of a sudden, maybe so he won’t start pacing. “The Jedi believed in passivity, defence, placidly waiting. It served them poorly. Corrupted them. _Self-righteous, severe, sterile._ I told you to find new fears. The Jedi would have had you lock up your fears too, but then you would be told to burn them out. To chase out every feeling in your soul. The Light is such a cold, selfish thing.”

Her damp hair’s making her shiver. She dares to walk over to where she left her outer tunic on one of the chairs. Just to get the tunic. “The recording said the Dark had servants too.”

“The Sith.” He rests his arms on his knees to look up at her, and he _loves_ these words: “Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken.”

He lifts the device again. It leaves the span of his fingers and drifts right at her, ready for her to take it. “The Force frees us.”

“You’re a Sith.” She only really says it to try the word out, feel the taste of it. It’s an engine struggling, frustration mounting, a raptor screeching with a dry throat. It’s a word for spitting and hissing. She likes the sound of Jedi far better.

Ren looks down. Up again, to the device he’s still manipulating. To her. “There are no more Sith. Or Jedi. There is only us.”

And Snoke, and those others she needs to learn about. So not quite ‘only us’.

Lying, oh how you’re _lying_ right now.

She holds her hand out under the device, and when he doesn’t immediately let it drop she can imagine she’s the one holding it up.

“You want this.” Ren’s voice is low. Gentle. “You want this power. And I am the only way you can gain it. How do you profit by being stubborn?”

She thinks about telling him _no,_ letting him prowl on the other side of the wall forever until he opens the door to find her dead or gone.

She watches the device dance on her hand. She looks for the island. She can only see doors crumpling before her, people pushed out of her way as she runs, could she even stop laser blasts? The hangar bay with a world below her, and then the dark of space. The Force can free her.

(She could find them instead of waiting for them to come back.)

She looks past the device at Ren, crouched like he’s about to spring at her or take flight.

So.

So, so, so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since the First Order is descended from the Empire, who were notoriously human centric, I'm not surprised that I, personally, can't spot any non-human species in their ranks. Wookiepeedia states that 'Within many of the labor camps and mining operations in First Order space, a large number of individuals involved were from alien species.'
> 
> Ominous.
> 
> All the species Rey thinks of are either natives to Jakku - the Uthuthma, which don't have visual references but are described as having socket-eyed skull face' with a 'toothy maw', wearing chains around their necks as scarves - or ones that moved to, and can be found on, Jakku. 
> 
> Abednedo look like this: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Abednedo_(species)  
> Bobbajo, a Nu-Costan, looks like this: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Nu-Cosian  
> Kyouzo look like this: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kyuzo  
> Melitto look like this: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Melitto
> 
> This chapter is brought to you by the Jedi and Sith Codes. I don't know if Obi-Wan or Yoda ever told Luke the old Code, but who's to say they didn't? Or that he didn't hand it down to Ben? As for the Sith Code, Kylo Ren is a resourceful person, and widely travelled.
> 
> And also not a Sith. To quote The Visual Dictionary: 'He is the archetype of a new generation of dark side users that have emerged to fill the void left by the Sith's demise.' He is also 'the ideal embodiment of the Force, a focal point of both light and dark side ability.'
> 
> And now I've got to write about training methods for said dark side users, with very little information to go on. 
> 
> Why did I start this story, again?
> 
> And thus ends Part 1.
> 
> (Now I REALLY need to come up with chapter names.)


	14. Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay. Work is really getting hectic at the moment, and deadlines approach with swords drawn and fangs bared. Plus the commutes sneak up and hamstring me.
> 
> Meanwhile, what have Rey and Ren been getting up to in the interim???

This is how the days go:

She almost always wakes a little while before V0-LC-8 comes to officially make her get up. She always lies on her chest now, buried in the pillow, and worries.

She’s growing more and more relaxed in her sleep as times passes, sprawled out and defenceless rather than curled into herself and ready. She’s getting drunk and stupid on so much food and water. She’s getting slower, she knows she is, with all the extra weight filling her out. So far there’s been no openings for escape. Is he going to teach her anything **_useful_** about the Force before she gets too slow and used to being stored and displayed? She doesn’t want to get up. She doesn’t want to get up.

Most times she gets up by herself.

 

(During the bad time nine –

ten?

Ten –

‘days’ into whatever this is between her and Ren, V0-LC-8 had to poke and then pinch to get her to move, and she shouted at them and cried into the pillow and was red-eyed and aching and still pulling on clothes when Ren arrived, and she didn’t get a chance to eat and V0-LC-8 didn’t talk to her for the rest of the ‘day’, but it turned out they’re not programmed to get offended and they just calculated she needed space and to ‘let it out’.

So that’s all right.)

 

She wraps herself up for training, the under tunic almost like her old clothes, the bulky outer tunic loose and nearly too warm, the shoes _useless_ because V0-LC-8 never brings her some boots no matter how she phrases the request.

She eats her bowl of grains and sour yoghurt and dried fruits. Always the same arrangement, same layers in the same order. Even the same bowl, specially assigned to her.

 

(For something to do she scraped the bottom of it with her spoon on day five and found the same mark in the same spot ever after, every time she licked up the last of her breakfast.)

 

V0-LC-8 clears the meal away while she visits the fresher again, then she sits and holds up the pads that Ren’s allowed her to have and doesn’t really read them. She looks at the pictures she’s permitted to access, sits, focuses on the door trying to feel the working of it trying to reach into the working and make it move trying to open it _finally_ , waits.

Ren comes over from his side of the wall sooner or later. There are times then, now and still in the future, when he doesn’t come and doesn’t come and then does come, and there are times when he doesn’t come at all and V0-LC-8 chirps that Lord Kylo Ren cannot instruct her on this occasion.

To which she hums and goes back to the pads and the pictures, or her efforts to force the door open, like she isn’t waiting for him to return and pull her out of storage.

She takes her time to stand up and go to him whenever he does arrive.

They grow fast past speaking whatever little there is to say at this point. They walk to the now official training chamber; here she unwraps herself again and takes her shoes off, because they are still bloody impossible to move in properly.

He summons the sabers from their storage unit. They face each other. He makes some gesture like a ritual, hand left hand out but only the fore and middle finger extended. They come together.

 

(On the first day he put her own ‘practice saber’ - practice for what she decides she won’t think about - into her hands, and put his hands over hers to show her how to hold it properly, how to switch from two hands to a one handed grip and back, the basic positions of attack and guard, very like and very unlike all the moves she’d grown from using her staff.

He didn’t, _wouldn’t_ let her go until he was satisfied that she could repeat the movements with his arms merely sitting atop her own, rather than moving them for her.  

“What about defensive moves?” she’d asked, moving away from his belt digging into her back.

“There is no room for defence,” he buzzed through his helmet, the beak of it pressed into her shoulder, curled so close and tight about her that she imagined him suddenly snapping shut and crushing her, she can deal with this, she _can_. “We do not wait for our enemies to come to us. We go to them.”)

 

He clearly amuses himself beating the practice saber out of her grip and leaving her - not bloody, not quite. He doesn’t use the Force. He doesn’t have to, just his height and weight and reflexes built up from years of this kind of combat.

If he hurt her only for pleasure she could deal with it, and that’s not what he wants. What he wants most isn’t even teaching her to come back a little better each time, to mind the way he moves a little quicker, to grow more confident with the shorter lighter weapon and both arms close together instead of wide apart. He wants what he’s wanted since their first dancing duel, and he wants and _wants_ and there’s too much of Jakku in her to give it to him.

 

(The device he brought in with him, on day three, all pincers and shiny black and a huge red eye, burned her as soon as he activated it. It was like a piece of hot metal smacking her in the arm, snatched away again before it could stick to the skin. She could have kicked him in the gut for the betrayal of it, if she wasn’t trying to smash that kriffing thing before it could get another shot at her. It just darted out of her reach and fired another laser into the other arm and she could hear him smiling under that helmet as he said “You will learn to block the shots.”)

 

He torments her. Playing with her, knocking her down and standing her back up again for more blows. They’ve gone beyond speaking at this point too, or else he’d say things like if only she would just do more than play the game, if only she’d try, show me _show me **show me.**_

Then when she starts _seeing_ the lasers from the device, once, twice, more and more, and can catch them on her saber, she has to choose between blocking him or blocking the heat bursts. The device burns her arms and shoulders and through her trousers as she holds him off, and it leaves tender skin showing him where to hit next.

 

(On day nine it got her in the head.

A burst of pain in the back of her skull and she was on the floor and her hair fell onto her shoulders in flames and took more skin with it and it _hurt so much_ she could have crushed that fucking device with a word with a thought

she did.)  

 

He always ends it by pulling her practice saber from her hands with the Force and throwing it far off, moving around to loom behind her and staying there until she calls it to return. He’s worked out that she doesn’t like him standing so close, not as if it’s hard to tell, so he touches her wrist, the inside of her elbow, his chest at her back.

 

(“Reach out and take it,” he said as he did not _yank_ up her arm but put his hand under her wrist, not even closing around it, and lifted it. “It’s yours.”)  

 

She tries to get her breath, the food’s really making her too slow, her pulse nearly at light-speed and if getting the saber is the only thing that’ll make him let go and stand back, fine. Fine. She can deal with this, and she thinks of nothing but her heart banging, the doors opening for her, and her hand not here at the end of her arm but miles and cycles away tracing touching closing around the worn hilt of the saber.

 

(The saber wiggled at first, but didn’t move otherwise. The day after, it rattled. Then rolled back to her slowly. Less slow. Faster. Still on the floor but fast.)

 

Back in her box, she gets used to fresher showers and the feeling of being clean all the time.

Getting wet so often actually seems to be drying her out. Her skin is sore and cracks at her knuckles, which is the only time Ren makes her bleed. Presumably there’s some tech solution the First Order have that could make her skin the way it was before he caught her, never soft but at least less likely to split and ooze.

She sucks on her fingers to make them better.

Ren leaves her alone, so he can catch up on all the things he would have been doing during the time that he now spends teaching her.

 

(On day nine he was back right away with fresh bacta. She’ll always remember the way his hands shook against her sides and shoulder blades, when he pulled her inner tunic and under wrappings away, barely time for her to hide her breasts in her hands, ready to bite him with pain and shame. But he turned her over onto her stomach on the bed, patting the burns on her shoulders – neck - into her hair and onto her scalp - with the bacta, for once not murmuring _show me,_ not lecturing or instructing but stroking her remaining hair, calling her brave, strong, _mine,_ glorious, “you will be _glorious.”_ )

 

She talks to V0-LC-8. Not much, just when they ask questions about Jakku and what it’s like back there. And yes, Ren obviously accesses whatever she says from V0-LC-8 themselves, or from any cameras if the room is monitored, but at least he has to go to that trouble, she is not speaking to him or for him.

 

(She asked V0-LC-8 about non-humans in the First Order: [The First Order is willing to accept the service of any species who swears fealty to it.] Did Ren have that line memorized? She’d wondered if every person and every droid here would say the same thing, assuming she’d get to speak to anyone else.

She asked what planet they were on. They said they weren’t authorized to tell her that.

She asked how many people there were in this area. [Not authorized.]

She asked who Snoke was, a reasonable question after their ‘meeting’, just being curious. [Not authorized.]

She asked about Hux, expecting [not authorized] and instead getting a dump of information about the life and times of General Hux, although she could tell when they had to edit themselves for the [not authorized] segments. She even asked a few questions, so that when Ren replayed the conversation later her interest would annoy him.

She asked about Phasma. She got a squeal and a plea to _never_ to irritate or vex the Captain. Comforting.

She asked what the planet outside was like. [A forested ice planet,] V0-LC-8 could tell her, and said a lot more about different continents and land masses and local fauna and unique energy-transmitting crystalline deposits, and all sorts of other things she could lose herself in for a while. They didn’t mention any native inhabitants. Probably they’re included in the number of people that she’s not allowed to know about.

She asked how long the First Order have been here. [Not authorized.]

She asked why they choose to stay here, of all places. [Not authorized.])

 

It’s an interesting way to occupy herself, anyway, trying to think of questions V0-LC-8 can answer and that aren’t going to give Ren an advantage over her. So no information about Vader, no prying into any ‘others’. No asking about him.

She replies to V0-LC-8’s questions. Things she’s found, wrecks she’s scavenged from – a long list - places she’s travelled on Jakku – a very short one – her daily routine back when things were normal and dire but at least made sense. She finds that she’s rationing out the information she’ll give, so she doesn’t drain herself dry just yet, so V0-LC-8 has further things to look forward to, so that Ren’s left waiting for once twice many times.

 

(“Sometimes I’d climb up all the way up to the top of a zipline, the very top, then speed back down,” she’d said, sitting back against the wall of the bunk. “It made my heart race.” She didn’t say anything about flying her speeder up into the atmosphere, looping loops and laughing when she could breathe. Or sneaking into that old ship of Plutt’s some nights and imagining flying it.

“Once I found a TIE fighter pilot. Took their helmet, sidearm and comlink. Got me twenty portions from Plutt. That was one of my best days.” She didn’t tell V0-LC-8, or him, about how she couldn’t go near the pilot at all until she squeezed her eyes near shut so she couldn’t see them grinning at her, or how she dug them a grave before she dared to touch and strip them.

“I helped a trader from Tatooine unload their cargo once, and they let me share their rations. Spice cake and dried apples and juri juice.” She didn’t talk about the stories the trader had told her, and how they’d offered to bring her with them because they could tell she’d been such a help, and how she’d said no and cried and ran.)

 

She reads the pads properly. She looks up the planets she can access and rations them out too, making the most beautiful ones that she finds last for days.

 

(She found Jakku first of all and set about memorizing the coordinates; whatever ship she ended up on, she’d be able to enter the right configuration to get back. If she dared. She checked to see what her Jakku was like thirty years ago. She’d imagined that things were different for the planet before the huge battle where the ships fell and died, but it seems Jakku was just as dry and wretched before it became a graveyard.

Tatooine occupied her for two days. She knew something about it, that was where Niima the Hutt who founded the outpost had come from, but she still spent ages studying the dunes and canyons, the pictures of busy space ports and enormous skeletons of creatures bigger than TIE fighters, half the length of star-destroyers! And _moisture farms_ , if she’d only had one of those, one of her own, and kept it secret and hadn’t had to rely on Plutt! She begged ear buds from v0-LC-8 so that she can go back to a desert, even if it isn’t hers. That trader was right, even Tatooine is better than Jakku.

Naboo took what she could snatch of four days. And she’d thought _this_ planet without a name was green! She barely stopped to eat, hated to put the pads aside if Ren came back, had to be forced to go to bed by V0-LC-8. Naboo made her want to get up from her bed again just so she could keep looking at the green, and more than the green. She managed to access a video of a walkthrough of Theed, the capital city, and the earbuds took her further in with sound effects of what must be running water, birds that sounded much sweeter than steelpeckers or raptors, echoes off stone instead of hollowed out wreckage. She committed the walks to memory so there’s another place to escape to, another way to keep her island safe from Ren.

The Queens of Naboo took her another day. _Beautiful._

She searched for ice planets after listening to V0-LC-8 talk so much about the one they were on and found another called Hoth, no forests this time, notable mostly because the Rebellion, was that what the Resistance used to be called? Anyway, they’d hid from the Old Empire, until that Old Empire arrived and drove them out and sent them wandering through the galaxy once more. There's even vids of AT-ATs on the move, like luggerbeasts. Strange, to see what her home looks like when it's alive.

She marked a mention of Darth Vader. No images, sadly.)

 

Sometimes Ren comes back. When he does it’s usually when she’s eating, so he sits and watches her flick the pad off as soon as he enters - though he can surely just find out from V0-LC-8 what she was looking at - and finish the meal and lick her plates, taking as long as possible. He reminds her of the Queens of Naboo sitting on their thrones, or Snoke’s hologram projected onto that empty chair. The way he leans back and rests on one elbow makes him look tired.

 

(On the ninth day he didn’t leave once the bacta was finished; he knelt by the side of the bunk and judged as the substance went to work on her skin. She nearly collapsed trying to get up for the fresher, and his fingers were cool against her arms and helped her to sit, even as she pulled the sheets up to cover her breasts.

“When you starve I will feed you,” he told her, his voice clear and low and free, stirring her hair, “when you are sick I will tend you.”)

 

Eventually he’ll sit forward and start to talk again, or turn on a recording or a hologram, not so confident in his own words on certain days.

 

(She chose not to store those moments. She tossed them out, buried them under the sand.

One time she thought of a moody phrase handed down from the Rebellion: _There Emperor Palpatine, he wastes away, poring over his strangled worlds.)_

 

Once Ren leaves, she stands on a chair to makes a mark on the wall for another day, high up where V0-LC-8 can’t reach and maybe blast or scour it off. In the corner and out of Ren’s sight.

How long until she fills the wall?

She unwraps once more and goes to the bed.

 

(There are times she wished she wasn’t so tired and she didn’t have to sleep at all, like day fourteen when V0-LC-8 had to physically remove the pad because she wouldn’t stop looking at images of Amidala. There are days – three and nine in particular - she wished that she would never wake up.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is brought to you by the Deathless quotes:
> 
> 'Koschei the Deathless knelt at her side and unbuttoned her work shirt. Even through her fever, Marya would always remember how his fingers shook as he pushed and peeled her clothes away until she lay naked by the hearth, trying to hide her breasts in her hands. But Koschei turned her over onto her stomach...Koschei did not speak this time, did not lecture or instruct. He simply murmured to her, stroked her hair, called her volchitsa, medvezhka, koschechka. Wolfking, she-bear, wild little kitten.'
> 
> and
> 
> 'I am selfish and cruel and extremely unreasonable. But I am your servant. When you starve I will feed you; when you are sick I will tend you.'
> 
> Plus a teeny adaptation from Pushkin, which shows up a lot in the Deathless novel:
> 
> 'There Tsar Koschei,  
> he wastes away,  
> poring over his pale gold.' 
> 
> I know it's sort of a cop out to have Rey obsessed by Padme Amidala's wardrobe when there's a whole bunch of other queens to choose from - but her clothes are just so PRETTY.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys. 
> 
> Oh, you guys. 
> 
> I am so sorry for the wait. The last - ack, nearly THREE weeks now??? They were a whirlwind of deadlines, commutes, visiting relatives, headaches and trying to get this chapter to work. Thank you to everyone, for sticking with me so far.
> 
> I hope it's worth the wait, though, because
> 
> *ahem*
> 
> AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.
> 
> (Mild spoilers for the Marvel Darth Vader comic, btw. Can't believe it's going to finish after only 25 issues!)

In one of the deepest rooms in the lynchpin of the system that was shaping and being shaped into Starkiller Base, Kylo Ren’s waking chime was low and close to his bed, as far away from her side of the wall as possible. He often started awake well before the time he meant to get up, no matter what time he decided would do. He lay there sweating, too  _too_  hot, eyes closed for when sleep would come back. When it never did.

 _Please._ He’d heard once her through the wall, back on the Finalizer, she was that strong. _Please, let me sleep, let me escape for a little while._

* * *

 

Kylo Ren sat low on his camp stool, eyes hot with exhaustion and the rest of him thrilling from the customary drills and katas. Before him on a table bigger than the one he smashed into two different walls nearly a fortnight before, there were maps and plans and messages, pads showing reports and vids and captures.

There were messages. There were always messages to check once he was done with his drills, which he drew out to the point of pain and collapse, just to put off the bureaucracy and banality of it all.

First, most important of all, the reports on the search, when they came at all and which gave him nothing,  _nothing._

At least  _nothing_  was now what he wanted, while Rey was still being taught. He read updates and reports from his knights, sent from Naboo and the Hosnian System and Tatooine, and delighted in their emptiness and failure. Everywhere he’d assigned them he knew Skywalker would never actually go or leave traces of himself, but then he was not going to hand his victory to any of the latecomers, the followers. When Skywalker died Kylo would be in at the kill.

Which his knights resented madly but still understood, so the reports made no comment on being sent to scour long examined, monitored and dismissed locations. There seemed to be a growing expectation in their missives. They waited for him to make some announcement. For whatever was going to happen, to happen.

No one had enquired about Rey, and there was no way – all of them so spread out and far away - for him to know if even one of them knew. Hux’s troopers may have been indiscreet enough that the knowledge of her somehow bridged gaps between star destroyers. Or perhaps one of his knights had followed in the wake of the Finalizer, curious about its destination and masking their presence, had been able to hack off a piece of his encoded messaging to Snoke, retreating to gorge and squabble over it with the others.

Or they snatched nothing, but Rey simply burned bright enough that they could feel her, even in hiding and passing.

He does not delay telling them, he owed them nothing, they’re entitled to nothing from him.

Then several short messages or requests from Captain Phasma, almost always addressed to Hux but including him, always concerning the functioning of the base, its discipline, potential problems and solutions. Sometimes he replied in addition to Hux’s confirmations, sometimes not; it all took so much time. He always he made certain Phasma knew he had seen them later in the day.

Reminders and requests that would be flat out demands if only Hux could get away with it, about meetings today, yesterday, a cycle ago, which he barely answered.

He could only put them off for so long, and everything added up into a waste of his time as he had to decide which to answer first, how to respond, and he had to dig his nails into his palms and not make a noise because Rey is so close, awake or asleep she’s always too close.

Skywalker had never taught him this. Neither had Organa, or Solo. They had kept him hidden away from so many worlds and never taught him how to deal with constant demands for his attention – not merely the whispering in his brain but petty little tugs and chimes on his messaging system, with yet one more petitioner waiting for his response, dependent on his decision, unwilling to act without his direction.

He had never wanted this.

The dark side freed him, and he did not vent his anger on anything in case she heard from beyond the wall.

Organa should have taught him to lead. He’d done a poor job of it for far too long.

Today Phasma (in a message without Hux attached, for once) asked about how the training fared.  _[Will your pupil require guards or a security detail? I have subordinates capable of fulfilling both positions. And when will they need to be assigned?]_  In other words, have you gotten her under control yet, or is she  _still_  trying to escape? Can you keep her in line, or would you prefer help, however under the table it might be? When will you be taking her out for things other than training her away from prying eyes? All phrased so expertly, merely as a polite inquiry.

An unusual amount of curiosity from the captain. For a beat Kylo wondered if Hux had put her up to it, though Phasma had always taken care never to get involved in the struggle between him and the General. Far too sensible. Only being efficient in establishing what would be required of her and her troops in the future. Something to consider and answer later.

He would need to teach Rey, on top of everything else, how to read these messages, compose and send replies, judge the requests and petitions, understand at a glance whether she should grant them. She would need to be able to look at the reports of skirmishes and clashes and espionage and understand how the battle was turning for or against them. 

It would be easier when Rey was trained.

There was a report filled with information from a death gang who were willing to trade, thanks to a sharp loss in profits caused by trusting too much in the word of.

 

Of one Han Solo. Of  _course_  Solo returned to smuggling in the end. Predictable, but pathetic. And long gone, so there was no call to leave Starkiller and Rey to follow a cold trail. He would reply to it later.

 

Another report.

 

Organa was looking for Skywalker.

 

When he came back to himself the table had tipped over. Not too violent, but the pads and reports and message board were scattered. Had she heard?

He waited for five, ten more minutes to put her back at her ease before he finished with the messages for now, failed to reply to that one report about Organa, still leaving the one about Solo, and started towards her.

Rey's training tunic hung from only one shoulder as she finished licking up her latest meal, by now comfortable (or resigned) enough to him that she didn't turn to look when he stepped over the threshold. She still curled around her bowl as if he or the droid, or a stormtrooper bursting in from the corridor, would yank it from her fingers or kick it away.

Still. She looked well. _Very_ well. _So_ well that her nutritional allowance would have to be adjusted again before she grew too heavy. Skin softer over her bones, the tunic and trousers no longer hanging off her or needing to be bound so tight; what was left of her hair, after the droid had helped her to trim the mess left by the laser, already growing back thicker. The muscles in the arm she'd yet to thrust into her tunic flexed under her skin as she raised the bowl higher. 

He looked at her, so healthy, and always made himself remember how he almost killed her when they first met. The sight of her vomiting up every rich thing he’d fed her, the way she had moaned and thrashed and retched, that doctor who had dared to tell him how _stupid_ his actions had been. Another thing Skywalker had never taught him; how easy it was to kill something without even meaning to, when you meant well and to do no harm.

“Give me a moment,” she said without looking up, starting to pin back the hair left at the front with clips the droid must have obtained for her somewhere. They were sympathising with her now. Sympathy that he really should delete at their next debriefing.

Her shoulders, what he could see of them, were still pink from healing, but she shifted them easily. He moved around the table to check while they were still bared; she twisted her whole torso away to keep them out of his sight. She looked up _now,_ hands still fixing the last pin, finding his eyes behind the mask to look right at him.

He knew there were no more curling scars where her hair had melted her skin. He’d put out the blaze in a heartbeat, applied enough bacta in enough time, kept her still and calm to allow it to do its work. He couldn’t even see the spot where the laser had struck her head, nothing in the close cropped hair to give it away. He’d measured her responses for the rest of that day and had the droid constantly quiz her the morning afterwards until she’d screamed, so the blast hadn’t gotten through her skull and harmed her brain. She was fully healed.

He knew all this. Still.

Each morning it was hard to believe she was still here after he’d nearly broken her a second time, stupid, _idiot._ He’d held all of her head in one hand, thought for a second her skull would cave in beneath his palm and she’d die still shrieking. _Idiot._ Foolish stupid pathetic

weak.

Rey pulled herself fully into the tunic, tugged the collar up, stood and followed him to the door. 

* * *

 

He introduced another drone into their lesson today. Rey glared at him as it floated closer.

“Save your anger. It’s merely programmed to stun.”

“Not eager to set me on fire again, then?” She turned constantly, never letting the drone get behind her.

“Say rather that I’m not too eager to see my apprentice brought down by such an easy shot.”

“How was I supposed-”

“Do you think every battle you’re in will have enemies that politely _wait_ until you turn to face them? Even if you happen to already be engaged?”

The drone herded her back over to him; she darted glances over her shoulder, trapped between them. _“No.”_

“I’ll admit, I was perhaps overconfident in the growth of your capabilities. An error.”

She had her back to him right then, so all he got from her was a thought like a slap in - no, a laser-strike in the face: **_fuck you._**

Foul mouthed _rude_ little-

She only just managed to blow his strike, but she managed. Satisfactory.

 Once their battle was done and he stood behind her again, he left a space between her back and his chest now, keeping her from seeing – or should it be feeling? - how his breath came just that bit harder and his heart beat quicker after the workout she gave him. She managed to fill that gap with her heat and heaving and shaking. Her arm trembled as she reached for the practise saber, and it still came to her far too slowly.

Hardly surprising. What else could he expect, when he used Skywalker’s methods? But Skywalker was the man who had once been his uncle, and Kylo had been a child when Skywalker had put his large dry hands over his. Now _he_ was a grown man and she was a young woman, who hated him touching her and would do anything to be rid of him.

He brushed the inside of her elbow so that she could merely shake him off, areas where the lightest touch would mean irritation but not offense. It built frustration. Many things could be built on such a solid foundation.

The drone hovered nearer, making her flinch, and he decided. “We will try something different. Forget the saber; crush the drone.”

“What?”

She pushed forward and away from his left hand brushing her shoulder, turning in the drone’s direction. He moved with her, bent down and around her.

“Crush the drone. You’ve done it before.”

“But. It moves too fast!”

“Catch it,” he said, coaxing her arm up again, “hold it” as he pushed her other arm up, “then break it.”

* * *

 

He encountered Hux and Phasma in passing rather than for a specifically arranged meeting. He felt rather like the captain these days, needing to travel the length and breadth of the base constantly to get rid of the energy Rey somehow created in him after each session.

“I have been assigned a new mission by Supreme Leader Snoke,” Hux said this time, as Kylo turned about to walk with them. A recent appointment, otherwise he would have mentioned it in the morning deluge. “I presume you will be accompanying us?”

“That is left to the will of the Supreme Leader.”

“Of course.” Hux barely covered his error. “And your _apprentice?_ Will she be in attendance?” 

Well. That would depend very much on how soon this mission was, the nature of the trip and whatever he might be required to do. Whether he could trust Hux’s much vaunted troops to do their jobs, his own knights not to come after her, jealous of their own positions and envious of his. They’d never turn upon him, Snoke would not stand for that

(the Emperor had done such a thing, he’d made an alliance with Vader and cultured his replacements behind his back, than set them loose upon his grandfather, on each other; he’d found evidence of one of them, Morit Astarte, pushing his own sister to a fiery death; he was surprised none of them had tried to kill any of the others yet)

but they’d strike at him through her. 

Then the problem of how much he could trust Rey either to stay quiet by his side and not cause trouble while still using her initiative, or remain here waiting for him and trust her not to escape. Too many variables, too many things to take into account, too hard to predict. Surprisingly gratifying, though.

“My lord, have you given any thought to my earlier suggestion?” Phasma asked, and eventually they negotiated, across Hux’s pinched face, that Rey would have a detail once he judged her fit to move about the base and in the field without his supervision. One more task done.

* * *

 

There was no message from Snoke today. He had another day to prepare his - defence? His report of Rey’s progress.  

He practised his responses. Not even under his breath, in case the helmet turned treacherous and broadcast them to the whole base. He mouthed over and over “She is rapidly gaining competence in the use of the practice saber. Soon I will introduce her to the light saber. Her ability in the Force is still developing, but she is increasing in physical manipulation. I have begun her instruction in both the teachings of Sith and Dark Jedi.”

The responses for the more difficult questions, though, those were hard.

He didn’t try to think about answers for anything about Organa or Solo. Should they mean something to him?

* * *

 

Going back to her after the morning’s fight was always difficult. Skywalker hadn’t really taught him how to teach either, and she was far from ready for Snoke’s methods, so he sat at one end of the tabel and she sat at the other end like a rebellious sulky child.

He could make her listen. He could take control of her muscles and make her look up from her pads, stand up and sit next to him. If she wanted to know so much about Naboo and its queens, she could ask him. He could take away her pads and substitute more suitable reading material.

He could look inside her head and see what she was thinking when he played the recordings or spoke on his own, but that would hurt.

It had taken him until now to see what she was doing; closing herself off, shutting certain responses down, even towards the droid. She withdrew into herself. He chanced to trace her thoughts during this latest session and found her thinking of Jakku once more, standing solitary in the desert. With a giant black raptor circling her and squawking unheeded.

Insolent little-

Did she _know_ what-

He could rip the chair out from under her. He could lift up the table and bring it crashing down. He could make her pad explode in her hands, if only it would make her _look_ at him.

“When can I go outside the base?”

Not quite so withdrawn, then. She still looked at the pad, her eyes not moving across the page or up to him. Perhaps she had wanted to surprise an answer out of him.

“When you’ve earned the right to do so.”

“I haven’t done enough already?” She took one hand off the pad and pointed to her head, to the spot at the back.

He waited until she groaned and looked up. “I’ve done as we agreed. I haven’t tried to escape. I’m learning.”

“I want more from you then merely no efforts to escape.” He switched off the speaking device.  “I wish for you to learn the lessons I am providing for your mind as well as your body, which you are clearly refusing to do.”

“I crushed that droid today because you told me to!”

“And yet you’ve ignored most of what I’ve told you these past few days in favour of reading, or disappearing inside your head. You made a deal with me. Follow through with it. We’re done here.” He stood and made for the door.

She snarled a lot. Slammed things up and down. He listened to every bit of it until she raged off to the bedchamber. How many times had he done this now?

* * *

 

He summoned the droid to him and listened to their latest recordings of her voice as she talked about how she wanted to feel a breeze, sunlight, anything that felt organic, things she told this machine it that she would never tell him. He couldn’t go into her head again, not that she could keep him out anymore but because he simply didn’t dare.

So this is the only way her can know her.

He was hurting her, she might be strong _strong **strong**_ but he was hurting her, and if he went on being careless the next time would destroy her.

* * *

 

Rey was pulling off the outer tunic and slipping out of her shoes when he started to unfasten his belt and halted. He could do all of it _without_ taking the helmet off, of course, but how odd (ridiculous unsalvageable) he’d look in her eyes and mind then.

His helmet snapping open made Rey look at him at last. “What are you doing?”

He held her gaze and thought of stone, of metal as he undid his belt, pulled off his surcoat and began to pull the fastener on his under tunic.

“What _is_ this?” she near shouted, as he managed to get his arms out of the sleeves. Off the tunic came. He smiled now as he slipped off his braces.

“You were right, last night. You are learning.” The fastener on his half shirt came undone and he shrugged this last layer off him, leaving only the sleeveless tunic underneath. “I thought I would reward you by taking this aspect of your training more seriously, now that you are posing more of a challenge. Perhaps you’ll be more receptive earlier in the day.”

And of course just then the newest drone shot him in the arm, clearly zeroing in on its scan of bare flesh. Stone, metal, he thought **_you fucking thing_** and just smiled at Rey. Keeping his mouth closed. “While I will be just as much under threat as you from our latest friend.”

Rey stared at his hands pulling his braces back up. At his chest. At his face. “I didn’t think you’d ever take that helmet off again.”  

She didn’t remember the ninth day, then. But she’d been rather occupied, crying in fear and a haze of pain and he’d only wanted to comfort her, for her to see his face rather than that mask she thought was a bird of prey. She’d buried her face in the pillow and he’d had to haul her up.

He summoned his practice saber and started towards her. “Today we will begin to discuss the disaster of Malachor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And yes, the chapters are now going to alternate between these two goobs. Rejoice.
> 
> This chapter is - NOT exactly inspired by any Deathless quotes, except this one: 
> 
> 'In the deepest, most hidden room of the Chernosvyat, whose ossified cupolas shone here and there with silver bubbles and steel cruciforms, Koschei the Deathless sat on his throne of onyx and bone. His eyes drooped, redly exhausted, from weeping or working or both. Before him, on a great table formed from the pelvic dish of some impossibly huge fish, lay scattered maps and plans and letters, papers and couriers’ boxes, photographs and sketches, books wedged open, upside down, splitting their spines.'
> 
> This chapter IS inspired by the infuriation of inter-office and outside communication. So many petitions/emails to deal with.
> 
> Kylo Ren's striptease looks something like this: http://aquitainequeen.tumblr.com/post/140050747812/starwarsnonsense-millicentthecat#notes
> 
> Kylo Ren ready to fight take the fight seriously looks like this: http://aquitainequeen.tumblr.com/post/141967651982#notes
> 
> Or maybe this: http://aquitainequeen.tumblr.com/post/142705246887/u-r-my-wonder-wall-adam-driver-in-tfa-bts-1#notes
> 
> *fans self*


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay! Hopefully in the next few weeks as our deadlines ease, I'll be able to get these out more speedily. 
> 
> I'm so glad to finally be progressing with this stage in the plot, you have no idea.

Ren demands that she listens to him. It is not about wanting or not wanting, so fine, fine, if that’s what she has to do then fine, she’ll listen.

He teaches her movements that he calls ‘forms’. Ataru for concentrated offense, not just the saber but her whole body as a weapon, kicking, punching, going for his legs and escaping from his onslaught.  Shien for reflecting - _trying_ to reflect - bolts back at that ever present drone, Djen So for reflecting momentum back at Ren through their blades, getting him to _back off_ for just a moment. Juyo or Vapaad for wild unrestrained attacks, like the desert storm come again. He promises to teach her Soresu later on, not sounding happy about it.

He tells her “Slow,” when she takes too long over any move towards or away from him; “take care” when she’s too fast and overreaches and he smacks the saber from her hand again and knocks her back. She grows to hate “Again,” near as much as _show me_ when he makes her repeat certain moves until he’s satisfied her muscles will remember when her brain falters.

“Shien, first position,” and she braces herself with both hands on the saber, close to her chest. “Now Ataru,” and she moves quick, quicker into a strike. “Djem So” and she keeps the saber in one hand to block the drone fire and braces again with the other, free hand focusing to keep him back, not that she ever manages it. And so on.

(“So, the Sith code’s about breaking chains,” she’d said on the day she marked as twenty-two.

“Correct.”

“Then why is there a name for all these different ways of fighting? Positions to remember? Just, lessons in general? It’s all so structured.”

“A necessity.” He drove her back and she jumped away from where the drone would fire next. “We must learn the rules before we discard them.”

“Why do we have to do that either? And where _you_ learn them from? Snoke?”

He pushed her back and the drone got her in the shoulder. When she could think about more than the thrill of the pain, she knew he was evading, not panicking but another secret, another fear.)

He still says, “Show me” sometimes, so that every muscle in her wants to meet him, get him on the ground and helpless under her.

“The Emperor of the Old Empire was able to see the future,” he says as he blindfolds her for the first time on day fifteen and sets her stumbling into the droid’s path, trying to sense where it’ll fire next. Through the Force, he and she can sense – not the future, not exactly, but the _probability_ of something happening, a threat or attack. She keeps track of the drone by its hum, of Ren by his voice and footsteps about her, and listens very carefully for them with _something_ that has nothing to do with her ears.

What he says about the Emperor leads into telling her that the Force grants visions too. Supposedly. She listens for anything more he has to say on that. Which is nothing.

He brings in another drone on day seventeen, lasers deactivated, and she listens (with her ears and with that new emerging _something else_ ) to how she can perform more than one action of summoning or holding at a time. She strains to keep one drone still while calling the saber to her. It’s good to laugh when it works, it’d be better if the laugh didn’t come out so strange and almost stalling.

She listens very carefully to Ren talk about manipulation of the mind. He barely mentions it, just in passing, an example of Jedi hypocrisy. Too late. She grabs it, stores it, takes it out later and gorges herself on it.

There’s a lot of time to think about listening and talking and listening again.

* * *

An accident that turns into very nearly a mistake. Late that night, the day that’s very nearly no longer nineteen, she makes her mark in the corner, stands still for a beat, presses her cheek into the wall and feels for him on the other side. She can sense him on the far side of the space between them, sitting down on what must be a bed, leaning forward.

If she does _something_ she can’t tell, it’s not like it was before when she clambered up the side of a destroyer and the wind tried to rip her off and away. She slips forward the same way she’d slot a coupling into place or push a switch home and he’s

_there_

humming like a processor at rest, tired and spent and open, if he were flat on his back in the sand with his helmet off and a shiv at his throat he couldn’t be more vulnerable. She presses further forward on the coupling, down on the switch

he looks up.

She expects a door slamming down to cut her off at the wrist. Her muscles locking up, leaving her only able to fall backwards and smash her head open. More screaming. A pinch at her throat that’s too hard and cuts off her breath as well as her voice. What she gets is a slow sleepy but waking fast **_what_**. She runs to her bed and hides.

(There are four people in the corridor, two by two, probably a squad of storm troopers.)

Walking back wrapped up to keep the chill out - in useless thin shoes - kills a lot of the adrenaline that fighting Ren creates. When he leaves her alone she runs again for a time before she showers. She tells V0-LC-8 than she enjoys it, it helps her take her mind off things, it’s more rewarding than constantly getting beaten and burned while training with the saber.

(There are three people passing by outside. Two together, one walking some paces after them. Officers?)

Now when Ren leaves her for whatever he does at this point in the day, she’ll press her cheek and hands flat against the wall. She squashes her breasts and her heart pounding between them into the metal, her pulse trying to tear through her skin. She thinks sometimes she could squeeze through the crack between door and wall, like sand getting in during storms, inevitable.

(Two people, slow, she can just hear them speaking if she puts her ear to the door seem. Just. She could scream through the door and find out if they hear her.)

Into the corridor and out in either direction. In the times she checks, whole bodies of people pass regularly down the left hand way. The right way is much less populated, but she doesn’t know that area very well (the room with the chair she’s pretty sure is there) and she remembers how the hangar bays are to the left.

(Just one person, walking almost too fast for her to catch at through the metal.)

On the third day after she starts running again, the twenty first day in all since Ren began training her, V0-LC-8 asks her [What do you plan to achieve?] and when she doesn’t answer right away they say [Your attempt to contact any organic being outside your quarters will not succeed. And if you could make contact, nothing would result from it. Why do you continue these attempts?]

“I miss people. I miss faces. Everyone’s learned to stay away from the route to the training hall; Ren’s the only one I ever see.”

[Why don’t you look at faces on the padds?]

The temptation’s there, _right there_ , to bang her head on the wall. Hard. She can’t tell whether V0-LC-8’s being sincere or snide or sneaky. “I want someone to talk to.”

[You can talk to me.]

Well, yes, she _could, b_ ut V0-LC-8 always ends up telling her they're not authorized and she's tired of it, she is so tired, and she can’t ask them to let her out because they’re not authorized and she can’t _tell_  them to let her out because they’re a droid and the Force doesn’t work on them that way

and I want I _need_ to talk to someone that it _will_ work on and I am tired, she doesn’t say.

(There’s a lone person moving very quick towards, past her. The door to Ren’s chamber beep, hisses open, hisses closed.)

She spends the time until Ren comes back pretending to be satisfied and sedated, looking at all the faces that she’s allowed to see on the pads. Mostly human in First Order outfits, some more colourful stuff from what’s allowed through about the New Republic. There’s at least a bit of variety thrown in when it comes to other species. She tells V0-LC-8 about getting excited when new traders landed at the outpost, stressing how much she likes to see new species and people. V0-LC-8 probably doesn’t believe a quarter of what she says this time, but that’s fine.

She stops resting against the wall. She sits at the table, even in the bedroom to give herself a bit of a challenge, dives into the beating of her heart and then reaching out beyond her body to whoever’s beyond the wall. She feels their hearts thumping in their chests, wrists, temples.

(There are three people in the corridor, two side by side, another behind. Two Stormtroopers and another type of member of the First Order.)

She covers her mouth to yawn, to try things out.

_You will open this door and let me leave._

No, then she’d be on her own and under suspicion.

_You will escort me to the hangar bay._

They’ll still be suspicious if Ren isn’t with her.

_You will give your armour and weapon and remain here._

Better, but then she’ll be stuck in the armour and have to pretend to be a Stormtrooper _and_ not get caught.

She could have gotten some passers-by to grab Ren’s arms and legs. Back when there were passers-by. They could have stopped stop him from using the Force for just a little while, it would have given her a bit of a start. Right until he threw them off and pulled her down and gagged her forever.

There’s one person coming along the corridor, V0-LC-8’s not here and won’t be back for a while, Ren’s nowhere near, she puts her mouth to the door seam, she says “Come over here.”

They keep walking. “Come over here.” They’re slowing down, she’s thinking of their head and focusing everything there to get them to turn towards the door without scaring them, it’s a natural impulse. “Come over here to the door.” They’ve stopped now, if the wall wasn’t there they’d be opposite her, a bit beyond her reach. She slips in and

_where what what’s happening what **is** this_

“Open the door.”

Whoever it is starts walking very quickly away. They’re gone.

She does bang her head on the metal now, hard. She goes and sits on the bed and waits for Ren to come back, once whoever it was tells someone who’ll tell him.

He doesn’t come. She curls on her side and can’t fall asleep for waiting, but she doesn’t even hear him enter his chamber.

* * *

That’s day twenty-nine, crossing into day thirty. It’s still day thirty and now, here and now, Ren says “Still trying to escape?” with such scorn. She hits him in the neck and he smiles, teeth bared.

It’s be easier if he’d just kept the helmet on. He’d look stupid with his arms and chest all bared and the helmet perched on top, not like a raptor now but a squatting steel pecker. He wouldn’t be looking more and more like someone she could have passed by on the way to some task in Niima outpost; maybe not dressed in so little, not on Jakku unless you wanted to start what Doctor Roa had called ‘cancer’ in your skin. But the way he looks at her now sometimes, he could have been a trader from the coreworlds.

And he smiles. He shouldn’t do that, it breaks the coldness of his face. He’s doing it more, with the huge smiles and teeth bared for when she gets past his defences and hits his chest, neck, face.

“Ataru form. Please, _tell_ me where do you plan to go once you have”

He blocks her blow

 “made your way to the hangar bays,”

pushes her back

“stolen a ship and entered the _correct_ codes,”

pushes with the Force so hard she’s nearly on her back

“managed to make an unauthorized take off, and cleared the planet without being fired upon.”

She swipes and gets him in the shin before he can jump, tangles her feet in his legs and brings him to one knee, spins on her own knee to get further away and comes up into a Shien guard position. “I want to go outside.”

He pushes himself up off his knee to stand over her, so she jumps up too. “You _will_ let me go outside.”

“It won’t work.” He steps around to her right and nearer. “That trick’s most susceptible on the weak of mind.”

And you’re not? she doesn’t say. He’s not weak minded; _fragile’s_ more like it. But anyway: “I’m not trying any trick, I’m telling you, I’ve got to get out of here.”

“No.”

She jumps Ataru style and kicks him right on the breast bone, only as she’s spinning away he grabs her ankle with the Force first and his hand second. He yanks her back. She sees the wall in front of her, the drone humming over them when she goes down after him, and the wall behind her when the back of her neck meets his shoulder.

He wraps his arms around her and presses her close into him. “Let me out.” She pulls at his hands and it’s like trying to force a steel beam. She gets one leg between his and try to twist over onto his side so she can break free, or turn herself around so she can get at his face. She raises a foot and tries to _stamp_ between his legs but hers are too long, she can’t reach, so she pushes her lower body up and tries to prize herself out of his grip. He just pulls her back down. She _can_ reach up to grab his hair and _pull_ so his head bangs into hers and his nose crushes into her neck and she’s pretty sure she might have felt his teeth scrape for a beat.

He doesn’t let go and doesn’t let go and she’d laugh if she could breathe. If the door was open right now and the way clear she wouldn’t leave this fight for anything the galaxy could offer. “Let me _out!”_

Now he’s got her leg caught between his and her free one kicks at anything and nothing. “I can hold you until you wear yourself out. This is pointless.”

“If I don’t go outside at some point, I’m going to go mad.” She brings her free leg up and then down fast for some momentum to break free. She’s up but she’s dragging him behind her, his arms tense and he pulls her back down, so tight now she can barely wriggle. He could crush her, even on the floor he could do it.

“I doubt that.”

“I _will_ go mad. You know I will.”

He pulls his head away from her fingers; a few hairs get left behind. They lie and heave and start to cool. She stares at the ceiling and the drone hovering over them, curious about what the organics are doing on the floor.

* * *

There are boots. And gloves so fluffy and soft on the inside she can barely get her hands into them, leggings to go under billowing trousers, a clinging under tunic and a heavy over tunic and an outer garment more like Hux’s coat than Ren’s cloak, and then a cloak again unlike Ren’s cloak because it hangs all the way round her with slits for her to get her arms out, but most of all there are boots. Not heavy ones she can stamp and kick with, too bulky and soft inside like the gloves for that, but they’re boots and they come up to her knees and the trousers tuck into them. Her feet feel properly warm for the first time since she got down here.

Ren has a covering for her to wrap around her head and mouth as well, and goggles. Really quite like her old headscarf and the goggles she made from a Stormtrooper helmet, which is suspicious and which she is not going to think about right now.

When everything’s on and she’s pulled the gloves on last of all she feels sealed and packed, warm as soup, which is soon going to get uncomfortable if they stay in here.

It’s all so soft, not good for fighting or running, or even walking too fast right now. The feel of the trousers and the coat close about her legs, the cloak over the top, it all takes up too much of her attention so she barely manages to mark the route he takes to get them to a lift.

They go to a hangar, maybe the same one that he brought her in through ages ago. There’s a ship being loaded with Stormtroopers and packages of various kinds, and Ren has a brief word with the one in charge of this loading so he can guide her up the gangplank and past where the Stormtroopers will stand, to the seats at the back where they strap themselves in.

The Stormtroopers filing in might be sneaking glances at her. Or do they know it’s her under these things? Do they even know about her at all, how far does Ren’s need for _discretion_ go?  They don’t seem to be looking at Ren, clearly no doubts about who he is.

A short flight and then the Stormtroopers are rushing out of the hatch into the light brighter than their armour. Only when they’re gone, that’s when she and Ren move to the opening.

It’s.

It’s all too big. Which is stupid, she grew up around and searching and climbing on fallen star-destroyers and those were much bigger. It’s just, the trees are old, each tree here is probably older than any destroyer in the graveyard; put them together and she hardly dares go down the gangplank.

The ground crunches a little when she finally gets there, although it’s been flattened by the Stormtroopers, who turned right once they were free from the craft and are now out of sight, still near enough to easily feel. She reaches down to feel the snow but it’s been packed hard by so many feet.

“Where are they going?” Though she’s more interested in trying to scrape some of the ice crystals up to see them better.

“It’s a training exercise. They test how long they can survive in hostile environments.”

She reaches some, what are they called? The bottom spreading parts of the trees? She touches the snow piled there. It yields more than sand; she sinks her fingers in easily up to the bases. But then when she scoops up a handful it doesn’t run away like sand, it sticks together. She squashes it between her hands and now it’s hard and packed, but then she closes a hand tight and it turned soft again, falling out either side of her fist.

She fumbles and tugs her left glove off; the air bites at once, but nothing like the snow when she sinks her fingers into it again. It burns with cold, cold fire. She gets her glove on again quickly.

She could climb this, she will climb this, so she reaches out and begins to pull herself up. Ren says nothing, no tug of the Force or hand on her arm.

The cloak gets in the way a few times, she’s nearly choked when she steps on it and raises her head at the same time, but she gets to the top of the tangle of tree stuff, rearranges her layers and starts walking.

The trees. Higher up the trees, and higher up still the trees. She wanted to see the sky and yet she’s happy.

She takes her right glove off now so she can touch one. It’s rough and alive. She pulls down the scarf for just a beat, and smells freshness and life before the cold kills her senses and she has to cover up again.

Bits of them have fallen off which she can duck under or climb over. She should persuade Ren to set up something like this in the training chamber. Add some variety to their combat.

There’s a point where the trees stop and start again where she pauses. She needs to save all this up for when Ren puts her back into the rooms and keep her there. She must remember how the wind pulls at her layers and tries to work its way in, the way the cold bites inside her mouth and nose, trees blotting out the sky with only tiny gaps left between, the way they _sing_ when she opens up and lets them in.

Oh.

What happened here?

Ren is making his approach now, moving even slower than she did. It gives her plenty of time to be sure about what she’s sensing. “What happened here?” She has to shout to be heard through her face scarf; Ren should have given her a voice amplifier.

“What do you mean?” he calls, very near, the other side of the open space.

“This planet,” she says as she turns around, and where did Ren’s helmet go, and his cloak, and what the hells did she make him do to stare at her like that, like he’d kill and eat her? And what’s that he’s holding, what sort of saber is that, how is he doing that, what happened he’s _bleeding_ , why is he staring? Why is he staring?  

“What happened to _you?”_ She won’t be able to run well in these stupid boots either. Should she undo the cloak so she can run faster, or pull off the gloves so she can actually, oh _stars_ it’s cold, when did it get so dark all of a sudden?

“It’s just us now.” The wind takes his next words away. He’s coming forward to get her. He brought her out here to kill her.

“Ren-”

She sucks in muffled air to power her lungs and legs and run. By the time she’s done that the Ren without the helmet and the mad _mad_ look and the blood is gone.  There’s another Ren ( the first one, her Ren) coming towards her, helmet and cloak on and no trail of blood in the snow behind him but still holding that buzzing whining screaming thing which really should be setting his hand on fire. A movement of his hand and a slithering sound and the lasers are gone.

“I have something for you. A temporary tool, until you can make one of your own.”

He comes so close that he’s holding whatever this tool is just under her chin, so she has to either take it or take a few steps back to see what it is. The way she’s feeling right now, her knees will give up if she moves, so she takes it.

 

Then the light goes out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is brought to you by Wookiepeedia and the Seven Forms. All the forms mentioned in this chapter are actual styles of fighting used by the Jedi and, presumably, the Sith. Soresu is Obi Wan's favourite form, a heavily defensive technique. Ren is highly sniffy about it, but he does admit it comes in useful when deflecting laser blasts.
> 
> I find it highly unlikely that Rey was able to master the Jedi mind trick on her first (or technically third) go. Here, have a number of failed tries!
> 
> Maybe.
> 
> Apologies this time for the last section. It will make sense in time! (Hopefully.)


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter needs much work, and things to be added, but I just couldn't bear to keep everyone waiting any longer! nearly a month, oh my goodness. Once I have time to work on this chapter in the next few days, by the end of the week it will look much better.
> 
> I also apologise for any mysteries and unanswered questions in this bit. Part of that is because Rey is keeping her lips zipped when she can to keep just a little bit of power in this equation; partly it's because Kylo Ren deliberately keeps HIS thoughts and memories buttoned up and dwells as little as possible on certain things. As you shall see.
> 
> Also, spot the Serenity shoutout!!!

She fell onto him. _Into_ him and he had to hold her up _and_ grab the saber back before it fell to the ground, activated and cut them both off at the ankles.

She didn’t push away from him, not at once or after several beats of her heart thumping through them. She slid down him as her legs gave out. Her voice clotted and all that came out was half shaped, unfinished, her hands were loose and clutching at him and loose again, one of them grabbed his shoulder and dug in

 _what’s happening_ she howled inside his brain _what what what_

“Come back.” He threw the saber away from them so it didn’t matter now if it turned on, hoisted her up round the chest and under the arms so he had a hand free, sank his fingers into her ribs and got _the talons the talons_ smack right between his eyes. But only a surface memory, she saw something else behind those goggles and her own eyes.

She struggled under the cloth, she’d pulled and twisted him but didn’t even seem to be thinking about clearing her face. She’d be smothered, suffocated. He yanked the wrapping down to bare her mouth and nose, let her breathe first before

she stopped breathing.

 

she’s dying in his arms he’s broken her this time or she’s broken herself and he thought she’d be so happy

he grips harder to hurt her if only it would make her breathe _breathe damn you **breathe**_

 

But her chest was still solid, lungs still full of air, she’d just been too shocked from the sudden cold, or whatever she saw at the moment, to breathe out again.

He didn’t want to he didn’t he didn’t he didn’t.

The strap of the goggles, her temple straining underneath the leather and cloth. That time a few nights ago when she had tried to sneak in (almost succeeded) and just now _the talons the talons_ , fair’s fair, one ill turn deserves another, and anyway what was she seeing that stopped her breath like that?

He reached out and in with ** _Come back_**

**_(to me)_ **

_oh dark dark dark keep it out keep it away_

_not the sight of it or the smell or sound, only the knowledge for him, knowing there is smoke, fire, burning, and someone screaming_

Who? Who?

 _someone else saying_ Rey, you are not alone,

Who? Who else is in here?

_dark and snow and ice between the trees it comes for her it comes it comes like Ren_

_he brought her out here to kill her_

I never how could you think

what _is_ this

_snow like dust particles inside wrecks hissing on the red saber will her blood hiss like that_

_he’s coming closer closer_

_run run run_

Rey, we are with you

Get out.

 ** _You_ get out ** _but that’s a surface memory too and old by now, she really hardly notices him when all she can see is that red saber rising up above and coming down at her and screaming_

we are with you, always

 

He found his tongue, lips, voice somewhere behind him. They’d gone so dry he had to work up enough spit to manage “Come back.”

And she came slipping sliding _slamming_. She pulled him along in her wake like a flood so that for a breath, their breath, there was an overflow and he was held painfully tight in his own arm with his fingers pressing into her skin and her throat pressing into his heart, forcing her chin up so he _had_ to look at himself

(does she _really_ think he looks like some sort of bird, with his helmet on?)

and also looking over his shoulder into the air at

himself again, helmet off but hood still up, his face half in shadow and half

half

half falling off the bones.

“But.” Her mouth was drying out, her lips sapped by the air, and she still hadn’t _breathed_ , her voice was so small. “But that’s not.”

Force fields bursting, blast doors came down on both sides, he let her go before she could feel his heart. And would have caught her again when she nearly fell over, only she grabbed for the trunk behind them and kept herself upright. Just.

Her mouth was wet again. So were what he could see of her cheeks.

She was incredibly noisy trying to get her breath back so she could of course, demand answers. “What was that?”

“What did you see?” His breathing was steady, there was that, and she couldn’t see his face, not even his lips, there was that too, but the barriers he’d put up and she’d put up might not be enough, there was that most of all.

“What the hells _was_ that?”

“A vision. From the Force.” She was so young and so untrained, so terribly untrained as yet, and yet still it had come so _easy_ to her, stars, what _was_ she, what had he done, what had he let in – “Tell me what you saw.”

“You don’t already know?”  The words were slower now, her lips were drying out again and the cold was getting to her.

There was the great temptation to get hold of her by the shoulders, get her to hit him again so she’d burn out some energy that way. Not through questions. “There was nothing to warrant my entering your thoughts. Would you have preferred it if I had gone deeper into your mind to pull you back?”

She pulled the wrapping up finally, turned away from him to fasten it, struggling with the clasps and the gloves.

She said something through her slurring mouth and the cloth as she finally got it back into place, something that he couldn’t ask about and still seem to be in control. He said “I sensed flames, and smoke. And fear.”

Rey turned around, shields fully up, wrappings and goggles firmly back in place. A mistake. Should there be another time he let her out, he would need to make certain she couldn’t hide her face again. “Who was she?”

Oh.

Oh, oh careful now, careful. She wasn’t supposed to know yet. Ever. “What did you see?”

“Who was she.” Not a question this time.

“What was it that you saw.”

“You know what I saw.” She was shifting now in anger, she’d pace if the coat and cloak weren’t in her way. If only he could see her face. “You know who she was. Tell me!”

Too soon. He should have waited to do this until he had explained things further, when she would have understood and accepted, he should have expected, stupid, foolish, useless, he’d waited too long now, what to do, oh hells what to do, help me _please_.

He could.

He could tell the truth. If he said anything right now and here, it would need to be true. For her. “She was an enemy.”

“She was on the ground! Screaming!”

“She had been defeated.” Also true.

The scarf over her mouth fluttered in and. She was breathing so harshly. “You killed her.”

Not quite as revealing a vision as he’d feared, then. He stuck to the truth anyway. “I did not.”

She turned away from him. Back to him. Away. “What did you do to her?”

“It was not up to me.” Thank the stars, thank Vader, thank _anything_ , that it hadn’t been.

“To who then? Hux? No, it’d be Snoke.”

“Correct.”

She curled into herself. Sighed. “Did you know her name?”

He didn’t ask if she’d wondered if any of the bodies she’d salvaged from had had names; the longing for a fight from her was gone with all this honesty he’d contracted. He’d started this in truth, he might as well finish with it, impossible that she’d be in any files Rey might access in time. “Yelena.”

“Yelena.” It was as if she were tasting the sound of it. She gestured to the saber in the snow, not even looking at it. “That’s hers. Isn’t it.”

He’d thought she’d be happy. She would be wary, intrigued, pleased at being given a potential weapon, so happy. He’d planned for her to bargain and trade and beg for a chance to use the saber again and again. She’d learning to wield it as ably as she did with the practise saber. He’d imagined her as a shadow cutting down all before her like rusted metal, rotted wood. He’d dreamed of it.

(he wanted to glut himself on her power and feast on her passion and gorge on her triumph until he could fill the hole that was left, every hole)

And of course it would only suffice until she had constructed her own personal saber in the proper colour of the Knights, maybe with two blades instead of one, she was masterful with the staff, but even with this she would have been.

She would be.

“You’re not the only thing I’ve hoarded throughout the years.” He called the saber to him, holding it close to his side. “I hoard knowledge, and information, and scavenger girls from Jakku. And I also keep reminders of those I have defeated.”

Her wrappings bulged out again with a snort. “A trophy?”

“Just as you say. I _had_ planned for this to be yours, at least for a time. But perhaps I was wrong.”

She looked at the ground. Over his shoulder. Over to where he’d thrown the saber. To the saber. Up to him. Too long. She’d refuse it, as something taken off someone as good as a corpse.

“Let me see.”

Or he’d be mistaken again. Still underestimating her! She’d survived Jakku where _everything_ was taken from those who were dead. The very goggles for the outfit she’d worn for scavenging, that he’d ripped off her too swiftly, that he’d copied and heaped on her now, had come from a corpse’s helmet. He’d thought she’d flinch at this?

He let it fall into her hand. It nearly fell from her to the ground when she did flinch despite everything. Expecting another vision? Her other hand came up to save it and get it into the correct position, she fumbled and pressed and then, then the rush and displacement of air and the bright of the blade cutting her wrappings and goggles apart.

He shifted slightly to the left to see her head better, behind the saber’s light. The wrapping over her mouth was nearly being sucked into her mouth with each breath. Looking close at the goggles, he could see the glitter of an eye beyond the dark protective lens.

She moved into a Djen So position, quickly abandoned that for simply sweeping the blade around in the air; he knew he’d heard her laugh. She looked around for a target, considered him, considered the tree nearest to them, clearly dismissed it as too dangerous and struck instead at a dead branch on the ground.

When the saber failed to sever it and only buzzed against the bark, not even really burning it, she looked back up at him with a heavy breath of annoyance, disappointment. It was glorious.

“I have, of course, locked the saber to the minimum setting,” he told her. And did not add _I am not an idiot,_ but only just. “You will be allowed access to it during our training sessions, and only during those times. And in time, you’ll construct one of your own.”

She did not give it back right away, or even after a little while. She practised walking while holding it, then running, as many jumps as her layers would allow. She turned it off and on again and several times merely held and looked at it, probably trying to find the seam and thinking about how she could try to open it up when she had a chance. As if he’d give it to her. 

When she was tired out and chilled and following him back to the shuttle that had been waiting for them all this time, she still held onto the saber and said “You didn’t tell me what happened here,” and he had to think back to when she was so startled and afraid when he came to her across the clearing. The feeling she must have felt, that he had become immune and indifferent to.

He stuck to the truth once more. “You imagine that, if you escape the base, you might be able to make contact with any local inhabitants.”

She looked straight ahead.

“You will not be able to. You understand?”

 _“Yes.”_ She shoved the saber back into his hands, to have both of hers free to hoist up her layers and make her way up the gangplank, unprompted.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So long since last we met. Things have been hectic. The muse has only recently returned. Many apologies. This is most definitely the story where I am continuously one sorry writer.
> 
> At least the chapter's longer? 
> 
> And will be longer still, once further additions are made. SUCH INTRIGUE.

It doesn’t matter if he knows what she’s asking this time.

“Tell me about Yelena.”

[I will need more data than that, Master Rey.]

“Yelena, the one Kylo Ren defeated, who was she?”

[Apologies. I am not authorized to tell you that.]

“Where was she from?”

[Not authorized.]

“What happened to her?”

[Not authorized.]

“What’s going to happen to me?”

[You will continue to be taught by Lord Kylo Ren-]

“Go away. Please.”

* * *

 

It does matter if he knows she’s asking this.

She waits ‘til V0-LC-8 has quite left her sleeping room and powered down outside her door

(she could go quietly to the outer door like she did on day three and wait to see how long it takes for V0-LC-8 to power up again and ask her what she’s doing

can’t be bothered)

and manages to get her heart quiet, then her mind. It’s hard work. So’s going to her island, so is sitting on the rock and thinking of the sun, any sun, she wants any sun so she doesn’t forget.

It is over thirty days since she’s seen any sun.

She has to stuff her mouth full of the pillow and curl into herself so nobody will hear. She didn’t even look up to try and catch a look of this world’s sun, when he let her out into the snow!

The damp sterile cloth against her eyelids is, it is, it’s clouds. Clouds are water. She flew up into a cloud once and got drenched.

She thinks of light off the snow that managed to get through the goggles, her breath rising up when she’d pulled the face cloth down. Her island’s hidden from the sun in a cloud. She has the cloak because it is only sensible to keep out the cold, though it feels more like the bunk blanket than the lovely heavy soft thing Ren gave her, so she stands to walk down to the huts while trying not to the slip because the ground, yes, the ground will be treacherous, but she’s used to watching her step.

She’s here.

 

I’m here. If she says it back in her body at least the pillow will suck in her voice. I’m listening.

 

She’s never gone down among the huts before. Good thing there’s all this cloud so she doesn’t have to imagine what they should look like. She thinks of holding the cloak tighter, tries not to think of things moving in the shadows of the doorways because this is _her_ island and no evil things come here.

 

Say something already!

 

Where are you?

 

How do you know me?

 

Who are you, anyway?

 

Help me.

 

Do you know who Yelena is?

 

Please say something.

 

Please.

 

You said you would be with me. Always!

 

Fine, then.

 

Then there’s just the wall of the room as her body takes over, shoves away the pillow and breathes.

Maybe it only works so that she gets the visions when she’s holding the saber.

Yelena’s saber.

* * *

 

Yelena on the ground, too much blood and coughing more up so she can hardly breathe, reaching up to Ren to try to make him stop or go away, screaming as he brings the saber down.

It’s a good reminder.

She could have been Yelena. She can be Yelena. She could be Yelena.

She digs the stylus in for each mark at the end of day, survived, alive. While doing it she says “Yelena,” loud so he can hear it on his side. Even if he’s in his sleeping chamber when she does it. Even when it’s so still in there he might be asleep or absorbed in whatever he’s going to try and stuff into her head tomorrow. “Yelena.”

She looks for Yelenas on the pads.

The First Order database is easiest to get into, and it’s best to be thorough. There’s no one for her to find at all, let alone a Yelena, even when she managed to hack it; they’re all numbers and ranks and they’re all human anyway, _boring_ humans. Still, best to check.

She looks at censored New Republic pages, cracks through a few firewalls and finds a Yelena who’s something called a Populist senator, a job which the First Order doesn’t seem to like-

-but she’s Mirialan and much older than the Yelena in the vision was. Had been. Also it seems she’s missing, presumed dead, which might be why the First Order doesn’t mind its members looking at her details.

She looks for other Yelenas beyond the First Order and New Republic, as much as the pads will let her.

Turns out it’s a relatively popular name that developed across many species. Finding _one_ Yelena, going on just one sight of her from the side in the dark and all wrong from crying _“Why why **why**_ **,** ” it’s impossible.

(Plus hardly any pictures come up in the searches that actually _work_ , and she doesn’t want to use jedi as a search term. Just in case whatever pad she’s holding at the moment blows up in outrage or, or something, and Ren comes in all smug with more bacta to smear over her.)

She wants to see Yelena front on and smiling. Not smiling. Anything, just, at least clean, confident, whole. She’ll take that picture with her when she gets out of here. She won’t leave whatever’s left of Yelena with the man who _didn’t_ kill her.

Each day she takes Yelena’s lightsaber back from Ren and braces, just in case she’s thrown back into that fire, the lying voices, Yelena coughing blood and screaming. Each day the saber just falls into her hand and does nothing while she checks the seams of the hilt one more time, think of how to force them open to get at the wiring and then get a stronger laser and then get out. Then she turns it on and fights with Ren. For both of them.

Even with the lowest setting that can’t even pierce skin she could go for his mouth, the soft organs between his legs, his eyes. She wants those eyes, won’t let herself have them. She singes his hair, payment for her own hair too, **_ha_**. She smacks at his ribs. She doesn’t _aim_ to burn skin really, but if she does happen to do on every little bit of skin he offers up to her it’s a nice bonus.

She tries to get him on his back and see his face when the breath goes out of him, struggles to feel what he feels when he looks up at her about to bring the blade down, until he gets out of the way.

* * *

 

Day thirty-eight. V0-LC-8 asks if Rey will tell them more stories of Jakku.

“I don’t want to.” She’s playing with the components they’ve sneaked for her from engineering, or construction or somewhere she’ll never get to go. She doesn’t put the bits together even when V0-LC-8’s gone, so they won’t be able to know what forms she’s creating in her mind.

[Then I can take those waste materials back. For disposal.]

She pulls the parts close, arms making a barrier. “Why does Ren want to know?”

[Lord Kylo Ren does not order me to make these requests. I consider your stories to be agreeable and informative.]

“Go away.”

[I do not believe you should be alone, Master Rey.]

“Go away.” She pushes out and gets V0-LC-8 around the main portion of their body. She muffles their vocalizer with her other hand. They try to sound an alarm but can’t get the noise out past the Force. She pushes them over and clamps them down on the floor, stands up to stand over them, the better to hold them still. Finally they stop trying to speak again or move their limbs, they stop struggling, they go still. They’re still there, the lights are on, they’re just not trying to get out.

She holds them down for a few beats more. She lets them go to push themselves up. “When I tell you to do something, do it.” Yes. This is what being Kylo Ren’s apprentice is; a single cold being, looking down at someone wretched, and not yielding. There’s a peak of anger and satisfaction, climaxing, before her breath and pulse start calming. She loves them for that moment of bliss and strength. She’s been weak for so long.

V0-LC-8 totters back onto their treads, adjusting their lens out, in, out. Rey thinks of nothing so much as an organic being capable of tears, blinking them back.

“Oh.” She did this, she did, she’s like she’s finally like Teedo and Plutt and Ren and, and, and oh, oh, oh no. “V0, I’m sorry, please, I’ll tell you stories. I’ll tell you everything. That’ll be nice! Don’t leave, maker don’t leave me.”

They stay by her side and hold her arm gently with a pincer as she cries. They hold still when she pulls them close like her old doll, what else can she do to show she cares? It’s not their fault, they don’t deserve all this, they’re just following their programming. They don’t mind, they say they don’t.

* * *

 

He’d looked so sad when his face was only flesh and glowing from the fire and on the other side there was that kneeling figure with the mechanical hand they’d placed on the droid

 _Force maker make me a stone take my eyes take my sense take everything I’ve lived too long Force_ why _I did everything I gave you my life my_ life _all my life why why why_

anyway, she only really starts analysing the human male she saw over Ren’s shoulder on day thirty-three.

She’ll take him with her as well. She doesn’t know if she’d _like_ him if they ever actually met. Maybe not, he looks like he’s normally angry half the time and sulking the other half, but she’ll still take him. She just needs to find him.

The hood was a bit like Ren’s. Oh yes, _that_ narrows it down. Hard to tell but she thinks he is, he was, he will be, older than her. Maybe younger than Ren? (How old _is_ Ren?) Long curling hair like Ren’s, but what she could see was lighter, like hers. Or like hers _had_ been because it’s less sun bleached now, much darker. A scar on his right side, going from his forehead straight down through the eyebrow to his cheek.

He’d been crying.

Yes.

She remembers those trails where tears had run at first and oozed later.

He’d breathed heavy like he’d been running from something. He looked like he was ready to die if that could make the hurting stop. Then when the machines and that mask were reaching up to turn him white and dead, he looked like he’d kill and eat her to stop it, keep the helmet from scorching off his hair and sucking him down into the black.

She’ll still take him with her. Somehow.

No name for him, and it’s too late to ask Ren and –

-and she doesn’t want to, because it might be, it’s possible that Ren doesn’t actually know that she saw the man. If he was in her head then she was in his for those last awful moments. He saw something else than what she saw, something that _looked_ like him but, but, but with the flesh dropping off the skull in a swipe from the right side of his face to the left, one eye already gone and the other so scared, huge with fear and pain.

So.

So what does that mean?

The man with the scar doesn’t seem to like Ren, if he left _that_ for Ren to see. Did Ren kill him? Did he _not_ kill him, like he did with Yelena? Was the mask what happened to the man, instead of dying or being killed? She’d thought the man had already happened and was long gone into the mask and the machine, but then Ren’s face is obviously in in one piece not two and still there. Has that happened and there’s nothing to be done but taking the man with her? Or is this Force vision tricky and is it still going to happen

(like it will with Ren in the snow on this planet or another, chasing her down, going to kill her)

and if so, what can she do about it?

Well. If it’s happened, not a lot except taking him out. If it hasn’t yet, finding him and, and, warning him? Somehow?

So. So, so, so.

No name to help with keeping this hunt secret as well. There’s plenty of angry human males with long curling hair, dark eyes and scars scattered across all the galaxies; she’s got one right next door. Can it hurt if she looks for mentions of helmets? She rations the search terms out; not every day and not a set pattern so V0-LC-8 won’t see and Ren won’t see and no one will see.

Helmets with eye pieces on day thirty-six.

Helmets with mouth guards that look like teeth on day forty.

Day forty-one and the man’s face is blurring inside her brain despite everything. Today she doesn’t keep her eyes on her tunics hitting the floor; she watches Ren taking his helmet off. Gives herself reminders. It’s actually quite helpful. Ren’s long face brings back the man’s, eyes, nose, hair; he growls enough during their battle that she can recall the angry look as the man tried to fight off the mask. Failed, but tried.

She watches him throughout that day.

He’s eyeing her as she wraps herself back up once they’re done.

Helmets like skulls on day forty-five.

She finds lots of images of Stormtrooper helmets. Current ones and old versions. Most of them cloud white, dead white, even the black ones don’t look like the helmet that wrapped around the man so tight and killed him.

Helmets with neck covers on day forty-eight.

Helmet teamed with cloaks on day fifty-two.

V0-LC-8 still looks and asks and checks what she’s searching for. She pounds on the walls to make them leave. That stops working after the first few times. They know she won’t hurt them. Again. She throws a pad but it misses them. They press closer. They touch her to get her to stop. She won’t use the Force on them again, she won’t she won’t.

Ren says nothing about helmets or people wearing them, or Yelenas out there and in here. Did V0-LC-8 buck their directive? Does Ren not realise? Not care?

Day fifty-five and their sparring sessions are stretching out so long Ren should just keep her in the hangar constantly; save her having to make the journey to and fro and there’d be more space to run. He sometimes carries her back to her box after the workouts they give each other.

(Day forty-five she wakes up in his arms as he juggles her about to get her door open. She can’t remember how she got there and for once she’s glad _glad_ he’s stopped people from walking along their route, because if someone saw her lolling about unconscious like a lizard that a raptor killed, _ugh.)_

* * *

 

Day fifty-five has been scratched into the wall. When she gets off the chair she brushes the wall and she just has to, has to _slide_ down it, to sit on the floor and rest her face against it. Ren isn’t there on the other side. It’s safe.

She can go through the clouds and walk down to the huts and tug the cloak tight, she’s so cold.

 

I am going to go mad, she says to the shadows in the huts, on her island where something evil is coming. She feels very calm. Something is going to give or break very soon and I will go mad or bad and then I really will be Kylo Ren’s apprentice.

 

Yes, says something hiding in the biggest hut, hovering at the doorway and about to come out.

 

You’re already his apprentice, says something else, standing by the wall surrounding the huts, the drop on the other side of it more than enough to kill. She turns to see it better, turns her back to the biggest hut. She thinks the something inside might be hissing.

 

What you need to do, the something else says, is make things even.

 

How can I?

 

The something else, now looking like a humanoid being in a cloak, turns. Not enough for her to see their face, maybe not enough for them to see her, if they even exist at all. It just turns.

 

He’s a kid. For all he’s done he’s still just a kid, looking for approval and having tantrums. Ask him about Vader.

 

How does _that_ help?

 

Ask him.

 

The last time I mentioned Vader he nearly.

 

(well, he didn’t kill her, but maybe he tried to)

 

He won’t this time, says the something else. He’s already put too much into you. You’re his now. He takes care of what’s his.

 

Oh. Great. Brilliant.

 

 _Yes, it is,_ and the something in the hut behind her is scratching at the doorway to come out.

 

Also useful. The something else doesn’t pay the something behind her any heed, so she doesn’t look around. Ask him about Vader.

 

I can’t. He was so awful.

 

When’s that _ever_ stopped _you?_ The something else nearly turns around now. She catches a hint of hair, the very edge of the curve of a cheek. Nothing else, only that it’s not Yelena.

 

I swore I wouldn’t. If I ask, he’ll know that I don’t know. He’ll have me cornered.

 

This way, you could know. Ask him who Vader is. See what happens.

* * *

 

Ren as a child.

She’s thought of him as someone presenting as strong with that fatal weak fault hidden deep, ready to come crashing down and kill some clueless idiot in the process.  A scavenger, pleading for Snoke’s generosity. A Teedo, scrapping with Hux over what’s to become of her. A mad raging falling wreck, once the weak fault was struck by, yes, some clueless idiot.

Now she can’t get rid of the idea of him as a child who barely knows what he wants or what he’s doing.

It’s.

It’s rather accurate.

Like now, because the helmet’s coming off and he’s already watching her like he’s starving and she’s a portion pack, or a flask of water, which is worrying and interesting and worrying.

He’s often looking starved these days. Before they start to spar.

She’ll try to check if he looks happier at the end of this session. Although maybe it’ll be like when she was younger and, just for fun, tried to compare how she fell asleep at night with the position she woke up in when morning came. And then would always forget when she woke up.

And he smiles at her now that she can meet him better with each clash and hiss of his saber and Yelena’s, now she can spin and parry him and also curve to _just about_ avoid a laser burst from the drone (it grazes her right side and stings like krithing hell but she can deal with it, she can always deal with it now) and now that she finds the strength to push back against him when the sabers are somehow locked against each other (and how can it be that two pillars of barely contained light can even get stuck on each other, it makes no sense) and she’s pushing him back, probably he’s humouring her by stepping back of his own accord but there’s still that little bit of power that she holds.

There’s the space to turn Yelena’s saber off when he’s not expecting it, so his saber just misses her face and crisps her hair, so she can press forward and upward.

“Kylo Ren,” she says against his neck, where his hair curls and there’s salt and water. “Why do you care about Darth Vader?”  

She wonders if his saber broke when it hit the floor, just as he gets her by the shoulders and forces her back, away. She can feel where the bruises will show up as he digs in. Tomorrow she will show them off like trophies, like prized salvage.

He looks at her so shocked. This is how he’s still so young too, the surprise he feels and shows at something being able to hurt him, not learning from the past and how she can strike that weak fault. It’s a rush, how like a child she can make him, this power she has over him, that he gave her.

“Tell me,” and she grabs his tunic and, yes, the skin beneath. She wants this. She’s wanted it since she drove him off screaming and smashing the world that he’d made for her to bits.

“Be quiet.” But he’s pulling her back in, his hip bone pressing into her.

“You control everything. I can’t keep anything from you. I let V0-LC-8 watch me. I listen to what you have to teach me. You take me out of your safe box and return me, each day. If you won’t tell me what happened to Yelena, at least tell me this.”

He breathes through his teeth. No, he hisses. No, he groans. Now it’s as if he’s been running from something and would be ready for something to die if it’d make the pursuit stop.

TBC...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate myself for leaving it at this point, but it's 11.21 at night, I have to get up quite early tomorrow for a day in New York, and then a transatlantic flight in the evening, and inevitable jetlag on Tuesday. Please be reassured there is more to come before we switch to Kylo Ren's POV, from an unexpected quarter.
> 
> Inspirational quotes from Deathless and possible explanations to soon be added, I swear to highest heaven.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before anything else; I'm sorry it's taken so long. Life held me down and took my change.
> 
> What's more, the chapter cuts off rather abruptly. More to come in the next few days; we're not done with our melodramatic goob's view point just yet. I've got to wring the last few bits of angst and anguish out before we can return to the much-easier-to-write-Rey. 
> 
> Further notes on where the Deathless themes rear their little heads to come tomorrow.
> 
> I've missed this. It's good to be back, folks.

She was burning blazing boiling against him. He’d thought she might take a bite out of his neck while she was tucked in there, already reaching up to push (not _shove_ ) her away – the things humanoid teeth can **_do_** when someone’s desperate, and she was still so wild!

But she only spoke.

 ** _So_ ** much worse than her teeth in his shoulder, neck, arteries. She would burrow down under his skin, through muscle and bones and find his secret and feast on it, yes, just like he wanted to gorge himself on her triumph, she would eat his heart just like he’d wanted to drink up her soul. Every drop and every dreg.

Now he held her close and safe (no, _back,_ _away, at bay,_ **that** was safe) he could think and she had said, she had asked. She wasn’t sure.

No. More. There was more.

She didn’t know. She asked because she didn’t know. How did she not know?

Careful. Careful.

Somehow she’d gotten one of her legs between his. Careful so that she didn’t try to kick his legs from under him, _try_ being the word but there couldn’t be any risk here, _careful_.

He took a hand from a shoulder so he could hold the spot where her head met her neck, his thumb under her chin pressing up through it to her tongue, so her flesh was still under his, here at least, yes, and he turned her head one way and another and she let him and he tried to see and, and,

yes, she didn’t know.

Careful, careful.

Now he had her by the neck on both sides, her heart hard under his palms and thumbs, his heart under her fingers because of _course_ she had let go of his tunic to grab his arms and was digging into his wrists. Not the nails yet, just the fingertips, but that hurt enough.

Gently now, careful.

His breathing, hers, both sounded like doors hissing _open shut open_ , like air inhaled and exhaled through a filter, a mask. (A breath mask.) He thought of his mask uselessly placed over by the wall – too late, far too late - and her face wrappings; metal, cloth, hidden behind a grill and bindings, keeping her mouth stifled and his face blank.

He could squeeze with his hands or the Force or both together, and her life would be all over his palms and out her mouth and nose, if he wished it, and where the hells did that come from?

Or she could break his wrists with the Force. Vices closing to the bone, a steel door pressing down on his flesh rather than in his brain, if he allowed it, if he let her.

“Why do you _care?”_ she said, and he remembered just after he had shown her (shown her _off_ ) to Snoke, on one knee, voiceless biteless helpless, she’d twisted herself about to hiss at him to _let her up_ , and he had pulled her up, he should have kept her on her knees always.

Was it the Force or his own breath (she was too close) lifting her hair from her forehead? What did it matter? “That is not for you.”

“I _found_ it.” She showed him her teeth on _it._ She wanted to snap them, she wanted his throat and blood. Good. He wanted hers right back. “I got it from your head, I scavenged it and it’s mine now, it’s in my hoard, _tell me.”_

“Little wretch.” The spot where the laser hit her scalp and skull might have utterly healed, but there was still always the point of impact in skin and bone, just _there._ His palm pressed so she’d feel where he could have pressed harder, if he hadn’t been scrambling to save her ungrateful life.

“ _Your_ wretch. You said so.”

Ungrateful, rude, **maddening**. And if she said, for a third time, _tell me_ and he didn’t do as she – if he didn’t answer, she would win and hoard that too. And then a thousand more small acts of defiance, until there’d be the Resistance in front of him and pure rebellion behind him, and the knights would all see and plot and wait,

and from Snoke?  Disapproval, scorn, dismissal. A loss of esteem. Authority. Respect. And Rey taken away. Rather taken _back,_ when he proved himself unworthy of her.

Careful.

At least.

At least it would hurt less to tell this particular truth here, now. She knew no better. She was blank, that backwater planet for once of some use, keeping her free from the lies the rest of the galaxy swallowed. No denials or annoying defences, no claims he was lying or deceived or so, so wrong. It would be a relief.

She breathed in to ask again. He could feel her nails in his skin. Preparing to throw his hands off her, she knew her power now. He had to get it back. She must _not_ speak again, and he must not interrupt or stop her. Strike now while she was still preparing. She’d learn. She’d understand.

_For you, for you **, always** for you,_

he kept that beat going as he sank his nails into her scalp _right back_. Turnabout was fair play even as she refused to make a sound of pain, or one of surprise at both his hands around her head now. But careful _careful,_ so she would know that he could grip harder or Force wield her into staying exactly in place, only now he chose not to.

His thumbs were _just_ under her white eyes. Over the corners of her mouth, too, dividing up her face like some bizarre Sith marking.

“Vader.” No anger or defence now. Get her curious, get her sated.

She breathed hot on his wrists. _Tell me,_ she did not say or ask.

“Vader.” He should have had time to plan and prepare for this moment, help me help her understand you! “Vader _is_ the Dark. The utter Dark. Vader is passion. He is strength, and power, and victory. He is the defeat of the Light. He is the balance that has been fought for, for so,”

and she’d already lost interest or just wasn’t impressed. She was looking down to his wrists, probably judging when it would be best to grab for them, she didn’t understand just as Skywalker hadn’t and Organa hadn’t and Solo had never even tried.

He pressed down on the bones under her eyes. Enough that she gasped and was looking at him again. “Remember. You asked, you _demanded._ You listen.”

He allowed her to nod.

He began again, actually thinking now. “The struggle between the Dark and the Light, the war between the siblings. It would have come to an end by now, every fragment of existence would know peace, if Vader had only _lived_. Vader was the solution. He was the hope for victory. The warrior who would have won the final battle, and with it at last the war. He would have strangled the Jedi and their Light and we would have had peace in our time.”

Yes, he had her attention now, yes yes. “I care about Darth Vader, _Rey,_ little scavenger, because he was the terror and dread of the Rebels who flared up against the Old Empire. His enemies came for him with hundreds of troops, fighter ships bursting down from above. A move, a gesture from him and they were scattered.”

How was it, that he could find quips and snide insults for Hux in a breath, witty rebukes for her anger, but when the subject was Vader - nothing? How to describe someone who was power and terror and oblivion, with whatever shallow words he had left. Not even a question, because he couldn’t. With Vader, all you could do was watch the, all right, yes, _scavenged_ security files and recordings and see just how he drove the rebels before him screaming in fear, how he was power and terror and oblivion, and how you’d be a fool to reject a place by his side,

a murderer for tricking him out of his Dark.

“I care about Vader,” as he drew her up, up and up, not meaning to but they were so close,

he couldn’t help but catch _his face grows younger_ from her,

“because he came so _close_ to his goal when he was betrayed, and murdered. He would never have been defeated in a worthy fight. He was probably the greatest warrior to ever have lived, and he was stabbed in the back and killed like any ordinary being. It was a wretched death.”

With her face in his hands – of course she didn’t look like Organa, but still, still, Force _still_. “And even his _death_ was not enough. He was denied. Banished. He would have been burned from the galaxy if it had been possible. Every trace of him.”

The helmet, she didn’t say. She didn’t say anything. She also didn’t realise just how the image she’d snatched and stolen now barrelled forward from her mind

_and his head is in his hands before he looks up at the melted black thing (it might have been a skull or a face or a breathing mask once before the fire) and says “so much depends on this, if I cannot do it, please help me, show me the way”_

into his brain.

And - no embarrassment, no shame! Why, **why** should he ever be ashamed? What for? Nothing but the need to share what he’d done with her, a need bubbling over the top and spilling over. “They started the destruction with his body. Planned for there to be nothing left, but there were still pieces and traces left behind. For those who looked.”

“Went scraping through a pyre to find it, then?” Vindictive pleasure. A half-formed thought of a frantic him, sweat-soaked ash-smeared and digging through a pile of burning scraps. Dismissed and replaced by another frantic him, clinging to the side of a downed star-destroyer like a beetle with the wind pulling and ripping him away.

“Hardly. I have far tidier methods.” Hard but necessary, pressing down the pure ecstasy when the prize had been delivered. The feeling when he uncased and wrapped it and held proof that Vader _had been_ , he had lived outside of, yes, all right, scavenged videos and twisted New Republic propaganda and Snoke’s whispers.

When he’d first whispered _For you for you **always** for you._

She judged him. She’d dug her way to carcases left from the Empire and Rebellion alike, stripped them to the bone if necessary and _claimed_ to have given them burials; she’d kept a pilot’s helmet and worn it to imagine herself anywhere but Jakku, and she was held tight in his hands, and naturally she still judged him. “Couldn’t even go and fetch it _yourself_ , then?”

“Well. We can’t _all_ be so skilled in the arts of salvage as you.” The tips of his fingers were wet, had they gone through her skin to the bone without him noticing? Or just her sweat heating up again under his flesh. _Her_ fingers were turning his arms slick, mixing up the salt and water across his skin, spreading the wave further and higher.

“Where do you keep it? The helmet?” she asked (might as well ask him where he kept his _life!_ ) as those terrible, wonderful fingers reached his hair and carried on regardless.

“Thinking of stealing it?” He’d moved his thumbs without noticing. Or they’d moved themselves and he still hadn’t noticed. Her face in his hands. His hands on her heart.

“Tell me.” Less effective now that he was so used to her skin and her hip stabbing him somewhere below - still too thin even now, his was stabbing her back at least - and her breath close enough to reach his face but not enough to make her fight. But still some power in her words. Compulsion.

“I keep it with me wherever I go,” drawing her still up, and _up!_ “Hidden in places only I know of.” He did not say, also guarded by passwords that no one in the First Order would ever think of, that Kylo Ren should not think of

(ben would)

and which he was not going to tell her, no matter how it was excitement and joy to speak of the man, sizzling electric in his brain. He did say “And only someone who saw me fashion those places, can reach where I keep the last remnants of Vader.”

And then his mouth decided to say, “You’re in very good company in my hoard, girl from Jakku.”

She looked up from his lips and chin, showing him her teeth again. “And _you,_ are still afraid.”

The rest of his brain was too slow behind whatever part it was that controlled his thumbs, trying to _dig in._ Just as well that for once she was faster still. _Down_ she went and out from his grip while he was still trying for her eyes.

Weapon. Get her.

Impact of the saber burning his palm, it hit so hard. He did _not_ bring the blade down on her shoulders, her neck, the laser burn beneath her hair, not even on Yelena’s blade. He allowed her back up from whatever knee she’d landed on.

Do I spoil her? Or do I only not want her to be spoiled?

She was in a Djen So stance now, ready to try and send any blows back at him. Not on the attack. Not with her body. “Scared that you can’t live up to your idol?” 

He went for her face and she’d better have her guard up because he didn’t care if he hit Yelena’s blade or Rey’s bare, bared teeth.

He hit the blade. Just. The force of it made the plasma smack her in the forehead and got her snapping those teeth at him again from that pain, before she did as her body had promised and deflected all his force and slipped away. Spinning as if she had somewhere, in all of their duels, latched onto the dance.

He wanted to rip out her words of _scared_ and _idol_ and fling them to the drone to vaporize. He wanted to tear her for her mocking and judging. He wanted her hip that she’d pressed into him, her terrible wonderful fingers, her teeth. Oh, he _wanted._ “Aren’t you plotting all the time, when you think I can’t see? Scared that you’ll end up like Yelena?”

That knocked some power out of her. Not all of it, but she closed up her face. “That’s hardly the same.”

He **_wanted._** “Weren’t you afraid of failing to succeed, compared to the scavengers around you? Aiming to outwit and outlast everyone else in that wasteland? Trying to become a girl that someone would come back for?”

“Don’t. Don’t you dare.” But she came closer by herself with no need on his part to reach or pull, wanting to hit him or hear more.

“You’re not a girl who waits any longer for someone to fall out of the sky. You will be something more.” What else is there to be, but Vader? He had the right words now. “We _must_ strive to be more than what we are, Rey.”

Yelena’s blade wavered and dropped just a little because Rey _wanted_ , he could see how she wanted.

“My Lord Ren?”

No, no, _no!_ Who would do such a thing? Who would come here, to this door, now, when it was unspoken but forbidden?

 _“What?”_ Amazing that he didn’t scream it, and from the sound by the door his gesture quite possibly broke the intercom button.

“Captain Phasma, my lord.”

No layers of tunics, no helmet, he could hardly be more bare and flayed open. But. It was Phasma. Phasma was safe. “Enter.”

Professional too, marching in directly through the narrow gap he permitted her, never even pausing at the sight of the two of them stripped down and sweating, coming to attention and beginning her report. “A message from the Supreme Leader. He commands your presence in the communication chamber.”

He could have yelled for hours, and slashed at the walls doors or himself for such incompetence, self-indulgence. “Has he been waiting long?”

“No, my lord. I came to notify you as soon the call came through.”

 “Good.” Nothing else to say, when she never expected thanks or compliments. “Take her back to her chambers,” as he called Yelena’s saber to him, leaving Rey’s hand grasping for it. Phasma would pick up on the undertone; respectful but firm towards Rey, permission to stun if she felt threatened, possibly even if she was looked at the wrong way. Though no violence. Even in corridors that personnel knew well by now to avoid, violence would be counterproductive.  

And Phasma was also discrete, and strove for discretion to be maintained - so he could walk closer to Rey, with her hands pressed to the back of her head and her breath coming hard now, more engine struggling than breath mask, and her arms hiding her face from him.

Unstuck from her physical presence, woken up by Phasma, he knew just what he should have done right away and should do now, only he was too distracted then and there was no time now for her reticence and defence with Snoke waiting and, oh fuck it, he didn’t need another complication bordering on terror to bind him, so:

“We will speak further of this. Later.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An entire year, and The Last Jedi, happened.
> 
> To quote Imagine Dragons:
> 
> 'I'm waking up to ash and dust  
> I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust  
> I'm breathing in the chemicals'  
> *exaggerated gasp*

Ask him about Vader, see what happens.

That happened.

He’s creeping _itching_ between her fingers and he’s left her cold. She rubs him off on the trousers and warms her hands while doing it, she still itches and sticks to herself. Sweat’s always hard to shift.

Ren only turns partly away to dress. He gives her his righthand side rather than just his back, shoulders heaving and lips wide apart as he breathes easier. She fights the need to walk around and meet his eyes, to see if he will turn, turn and turn again to try and escape. It pleases her that he loses his own battle, two - _three_ times, to look at her.

Something strikes her foot. Her outer tunic, which Phasma has kicked across the floor to her so hard the fastenings banged her toes. “If you are ready, Master Ren.”

Right. Right. Okay. Phasma means her? Apparently so. Now she purposefully doesn’t keep an eye on the Captain while bending down to get the overtunic. She certainly isn’t wary.

As they’re half out of the doorway, Phasma a step or two behind and Rey looking back past the metal shoulder at Ren summoning his helmet

(he’s thinking of the mask he tracked and scavenged and hides and kneels before and prays _for you for you **always** for you_ )

Phasma is saying, very quiet, “Attempt to twist my mind, _Master_ Ren, and I will stun you in the face and drag you back to your quarters.”

That’s a change from last time. “I didn’t plan to do anything like that.”

“The constant muttering behind your door would suggest otherwise. And do not try to catch me off-guard. I’m well aware hand gestures are not always necessary when exercising your power.” Which is news to her and which she fights not to let Phasma see, _did_ she see? It’s so frustrating when she doesn’t yet know all the little quirks beneath the armour, like those she’s won off Ren. “From now on, you will please stay _out_ of the brains of our operatives. I will not tolerate further disruption amid the ranks.”

She nods, the bold jerk of ‘Heard what you said, taking it under consideration, no promises though’. Anyone who knew her from Jakku, anyone who knew her well and all her little quirks, would know that. Phasma likely takes it for obedience, maybe defiance. Ren would, would, he’d find other ways to tell.

Despite (because of?) what she seems to know about the Force and hand gestures, it appears Phasma doesn’t quite dare to escort Kylo Ren’s apprentice around the base with her hands bound. Doesn’t even want to touch Rey, judging by the way the outer tunic was returned and how she gestures now with her gun. The cuffs stay firmly on her belt.

On the side her cape doesn’t cover. In full view.

Rey stops them when they’re only a few paces down the corridor, to shrug the outer tunic part way off and bare an arm again. Because she’s still blazing, she misses her arms being bare, Phasma will be irriated but unable to do anything, the rest of the base (the rest of the planet as far as she’s concerned) will see no cuffs, and she imagines it looks good. Like Phasma’s cape.

Her muscles remember the way well enough by now. It’s like taking her speeder ( _her_ speeder the one Phasma wouldn’t let her _take_ ) to the outpost, every turn she needs/needed to make and every point to speed up or slow down. Her body works so the Rey inside can go away and think. Not even about Vader and power and _more than what we are_ , just think of nothing. Nothing and the look on Ren’s face when he spoke of peace in their time. Our time.

Then something hard catches and pulls the crook of her arm; it’s the muzzle of Phasma’s kriffing blaster. Right on the soft middle of her elbow, you could blow the lower arm right off like that! Phasma’s finger had better not be on the trigger. “ _This_ way, if you please, Master Ren.”

She doesn’t please, sliding out from under the muzzle, no, not at all. “Ren told you to take me back to my chambers. He’ll be displeased if he returns and finds I’m not there.” Her back starts up again right away with sweat. Phasma was close to Hux. He’d praised her, way back at the start of it all. Was this because of Hux? Was this a fight starting up again with Ren? With her as the spoiled mess to be fought over? Broken first so neither of them can have her?

A very long empty corridor. Any cameras? Definitely no one to overhear any chance remarks or see if Phasma decides to take the blaster or the shock stick to her. Phasma thinks she can get away with this? She’s not the feverish scavenger dragged around until she screams, the prisoner trotting meekly along in thin shoes, not even Ren’s salvage, no, _no_ , she’s Kylo Ren’s apprentice. Phasma at least ‘disciplined’ those stormtroopers for an understandable reason, she should be a fervent follower of the First Order’s desire for logic, structure, discipline and what have you. Petty feuds between her superiors might be beneath her?

Meanwhile: “That is my aim, Master Ren. I also intend to keep you out of the range of more susceptible minds. You’ll forgive me if I do not trust your self-control.”

More minds? Since, yes, there are footsteps down the end of that long corridor. Armoured steps and open tempting minds. She and Ren normally don’t emerge from training this early; people must feel safer to walk the route they usually take here and back again.

She really was asleep. She’s here without walls or a lock or Ren to hold her tight and close, why hasn’t she run yet? All Phasma can do is shoot her, she’s had plenty experience with that by now. Run run, why isn’t she running?

Instead _why why why_ she asks “Why do you call me that? Call me Ren? That’s not my name.”

“It is your name, and what you are.” Phasma doesn’t even appear to look at her, the helmet’s eyes directed to be sure the Stormtroopers are out of sight and mind. “You are Ren. From the moment the Supreme Leader gave you to Kylo Ren. Even if you are not yet one of the Knights.”

Rey shuts her teeth. On Ren and knights and _what_ and _why_. She’s found those ‘others’ V0-LC-8 mentioned at last and so easily and at the _worst_ possible time, don’t let it be from Phasma, she can wait, she’ll ask Ren or corner him. Not Phasma, who stands close to Hux and is now turning to look at her.

“You didn’t know.” Slower speech than ever before, voice is higher, she’s surprised. “He hasn’t _told_ you.” Richer this time, satisfaction seeping in.

She can still salvage this. A fair trade of her own surprise and humiliation for more of a haul. “The Knights?”

Phasma makes her wait a beat, but at last she trades in turn. “The Knights of Ren. Supreme Leader Snoke’s most _trusted_ enforcers, with Lord Kylo Ren as their master. They answer to Snoke first, Kylo second.”

“Where.” It takes effort to ask, it shows, that should be enough of a payment for the captain. “Where are they? Are they here, on base?”

“Hardly. They carry out Snoke’s orders across the galaxy.”

“Where?”

“I am not authorized to know.” Which Phasma sounds annoyed about, and it’s so reminiscent of V0-LC-8 and all their [not authorized] that she doesn’t even try not to laugh.

“I’m sure you find it amusing _now.”_ Rey waits for Phasma to add to that. The captain only gestures, with the blaster, for the walk to begin once more.

She prods at the discomfort, this huge omission by Ren _her_ Ren. It’s not a stab or tear so much as a blow from a fist, the immediate shock gone and the pulse left behind. “Have you met many of them?”

“Our paths have crossed.” Which is not a yes or a no, but then Rey didn’t have anything to trade for it.

“Is that where you learned about the Force?”

“I’ve seen it in use. An effective tool when applied properly, and the Knights are most creative ”

She’ll bet they are. If Phasma’s seen Ren ( _her_ Ren) freezing people and pulling them every which way with the Force, maybe even reading their minds with far blunter trauma than he’s used on her, what exactly does the captain think of as creative?

Phasma’s route is rather more direct than Ren’s ( _her_ Ren’s). One flash of a data chip and they duck into a wall and pass circuitry stretching up to the ceiling, then down in a lift which presses Rey far too close to that polished shell and that muzzle now jammed up into her breastbone, Phasma is _not_ taking any chances. Out into another corridor in another flash, it’s all impossible to keep count of in paces, no way out that Rey can spot, and they’re back to the old familiar corridor, the door to the chambers, Phasma has authorization to open it up and she has to muster dignity and walk in before she’s pushed. Either Phasma’s concerned about surveillance or she isn’t worth the trade of a parting shot. There’s time enough before the door closes to turn and see herself smeared and stretched across Phasma’s breastplate.

It’s too much. Get the outer tunic off and get busy running or punching or doing something, it’s all too much. Ren this Ren _her_ Ren, all his confession and talk of Vader and _more than what we are_ and then Phasma with the knights, there have been others before her and they are there now when she thought, she’d forgotten, she’d thought, he had said our time, she’d thought he meant, she could have traded that shock and humiliation to Phasma for a motherload instead of the paltry haul she gotten in return.

Also, if she escapes now it won’t just be _one_ mad Force user after her, it’ll be several creative ones, all answering to the mad one.

So.

So, so, so.

Fresher or island, fresher or island? Island first, because if she goes into the fresher she’ll stay amidst the water forever. A terrible waste.

She’s piling blankets into a nest for her trip, something to clutch to and quiet the shakes she hasn’t yet managed to run off. That’s when she catches the beginning of his approach. Pressure in the back of her brain, like his hand’s inside her skull and pushing down steady, harder. He’s coming fast. Which likely means he’s angry. She grasps the last blanket so tight she could punch holes in it, there’s no feel of softness left inside all the pain.

So. Stay here on the bed and wait for him. Hide in the fresher and delay him until he’s calmed down, always assuming he has standards about barging in on people showering. Go out to meet him, give him her face rather than her back.

She makes it part way back into the main room when his door starts to open automatically, but the metal buckles and squashes back towards the wall so he can get at her faster, through the screams and sparks he comes, his legs long enough that he can just step up onto the table and his hand already reaching out

 _not the island, nothing so much as the wreck of_ Exaltation _that one day will fall but now stands against the sand and wind_

and the blow of his reach, hitting the wall she makes out of that memory, it drives her back, slip sliding on the metal, he’ll have her against the real wall, he’s too strong for her to push back but she could, she could push him to

Ren, her Ren, Kylo Ren yelps as the Force _shoves_ on his right-hand side (the one he showed her while he dressed) knocks him off his feet and the momentum carries him in a half circle right into the wall. Which she is only aware of thanks to the pull of the _thing_ between them, like a long cord binding their wrists to each other, as she’s also swept off her feet by the momentum and lands hard.

Rey manages to get up on her knees first. Ren’s attempt to push himself upright - ends with his forehead nearly meeting the floor again. There’s a fair bit of pain getting through the mask.

“Crazy blood-drinker. What are you _doing?_ I thought we were already well past this?”

Ren’s changed his tactic to getting the wall behind him, about to push himself up to a crouch. “We, have made so little progress, and _you_ need to be-”

“Is this about Snoke? What did he say to you?”

“He has made his displeasure known-”

“Show me.” Ren must be very dazed from hitting the wall; he’s too slow, too slow as she goes to him on hands and knees and catches him at the leg and the neck.

“Show me.” He starts at her nails digging into his thigh as she pushes herself up, he breathes harsh while she must find a way around the rim of the helmet and then she’s _there,_ her thumb under his chin where the face guard doesn’t reach (against his jawbone where he keeps his will) and her fingers where his high collar ends and the metal begins, her palm on his heartbeat.

“Show me.”

“You cannot-” as he clutches her shoulders-

“Show. Me.”

Easy, slot the coupling, flick the switch and he parts for her and he is

 

 _on one knee before the sending of Snoke, sticky in his layers, old sweat of battle and this new sweat of_ shame failure _pouring through him_

 

_“you promise me progress, I sense only her defiance”_

 

_“her will is strong, Supreme Leader. In time, it will surely make her a formidable power.”_

 

 _“formidable in_ what _, Kylo Ren? The Dark Side? Or the Light?”_

 

it burns the thought of it burns

and it pulls

 

_“perhaps I was mistaken in giving her to you after all.”_

 

_“trust in me, my lord! I will train her. I will break her from the Light,”_

 

I will finish what Vader started

 

_Snoke peers down, his mouth twists_

 

_“you have compassion for her.”_

 

No no that’s mine that’s

 

_“the._

 

_the regard that a teacher has for their pupil._

 

_nothing more.”_

 

_“i perceive the problem. it isn’t her strength that is making you fail. it’s your weakness.”_

 

Get out get out

 

_“with your teaching, I will master this lapse, Supreme Leader.”_

 

_“i expected a new knight from you, Lord Ren. take care that you do not raise up a new Jedi instead.”_

 

**Out**

Rey slams back hard into herself and backwards too, and inevitably she brings Kylo Ren down with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Snoke's commentary about compassion is taken from the novelization of The Force Awakens. It was apparently in the script, and was even shot, but I don't know if we'll ever see it in the flesh, as it were. I thought it was appropriate to finally roll it out.
> 
> I am very glad that I didn't start writing Phasma until after all the backstory about her emerged. She was all set to be this story's version of Madame Lebedeva, and then I learn no one in the First Order's ever even seen her without her mask?!?! Tricky, tricky.
> 
> I am not glad that we have had absolutely nothing on the Knights of Ren in two films, save their names and a brief rainy shot. If they show up in Episode IX, they will never be enough to live up to expectations.


End file.
